Emirates Expands In Toronto With Daily A380 Flights

If Emirates launches flights to another Canadian city, why would they only be able to operate at most 5x weekly? Prior to this new agreement, the U.A.E. had 14x weekly flights allowed between EK and EY. Emirates only had 5x weekly flights due to Toronto (I've heard this was due to a limit on seats allowed on this route due to the agreement, and EK operated an A380 to YYZ), while Etihad has 6x weekly flights. If the new limit is 21 weekly flights, and EK gets all 7 of the new slots, won't they be able to have uo to 14 weekly flights to Canada (assuming the seat cap has increased significantly and/or been abolished - If it has only increased 50% compared to the old limit, then EK in theory will only be able to have another 5x weekly A380 flights to Canada, 2 of which are being used on the YYZ expansion. In that case, EK can either launch service to another Canadian market with 3x weekly A380 flights, or 4x weekly 777 flights, assuming Etihad does not want to expand).

@ JB -- Your analysis is spot on. I believe the issue is that there's a seat cap beyond the weekly frequency cap. In other words, I think the 14x weekly frequencies were maxed out between the 5x weekly Emirates and 6x weekly Etihad flights, or else we would have already seen expansion.

So my guess is that if Emirates were to get all the UAE frequencies, the airline could fly a total of up to 5x additional A380s, and two of those are being used for the Toronto expansion.

Emirates is rounding out the frequencies in YYZ to prevent AC from launching more India flights. That’s the bread and butter of EK and so piling the seats into the market makes makes it less attractive for AC to launch BLR or something along those lines.

This traffic also typically books closer in so you’d be surprised how full those additional frequencies might be in 2 weeks.

EK could fill 2 daily A380s out of YYZ. Maybe even 3. The demand to the Indian subcontinent and other nearby destinations is massive and only growing. That said, my guess is the added frequencies will be deployed out of YVR to tap into the huge Indian community there. And, given EK and EY aren't subject to the Russia overfly ban, they have an advantage over AC for now. Ultimately AC and maybe even WS will add a lot more capacity to/from India from multiple gateways, but this new UAE lift will take some of that now. Oh, and remember there was a diplomatic spat between Canada and Saudi a while ago so Saudia still hasn't returned to flying from Canada and so that volume has to go somewhere.

As 21 weekly is allowed for UAE carriers and Emirates have just increased Toronto to Daily A380 and Etihad offers 6 weekly Toronto 777 flights
I see the frequencies being split as 11 for EK and 10 for EY
EK daily Toronto a380 and 4 weekly Montreal or Vancouver
EY daily Toronto 777 and 3 weekly to the city EK doesn’t choose

@Lucky, I think a relevant addition to this article is how many more award seats (and how much they cost) would potentially be added along these new routes.

Will AC and WS be able to work out the Canada-India route bypassing the Russian airspace? If I am right, the YYZ-BOM route presently involves a refueling stop at LHR.

I believe this urgent schedule from Toronto is for USA fliers travelling to middle east and Indian subcontinent. When JetBlue tie up was removed for Emirates, Emirates lost at lot of business from cities such as DTW, etc this added frequency will add routes for Emirates thru air Canada and united

I don't think that Etihad is going to add anything beyond one more weekly flight from Abu Dhabi to Toronto to make that route once daily. They have always been much more conservative in their growth given that in the US they only currently fly to New York, Chicago and DC. That being said, I think that Emirates will put a new service to Vancouver because with the Russian airspace closures, it would be harder for AC to operate YVR-DXB than if EK did so. YVR has a crazy high number of VFR traffic, higher than YUL, which Turkish already has capitalized on with their 3x weekly route. Since there are so many connections from DXB-India/Pakistan/Iran, Emirates can help facilitate that high demand from YVR. If anyone is to introduce DXB-YUL, I would say it would be AC metal flying with EK codeshare as well. Just hoping we get to see another A380 service to Canada soon.

This is part of why I think EK or EY will start service ex YVR first. They can still overfly Russia and YVR has a huge Indian subcontinent diaspora.

Great, now when trying to redeem with Aeroplan to the Indian Subcontinent it shows as First Class "everyday" with only the last sector Dubai-Indian subcontinent in F while the flights to get to Dubai are mainly Economy and very rarely in Business ranging from 300 to 490K points. . Business was easily accessible with 90K with a combination of Egypt Air and Gulf Air. Now it's with Egypt Air and Emirates for the outrageous 300+ points. What a joke

The Air Canada AC 56 to Dubai and onwards to the final Destination on Emirates for 434K is showing as "First Class" not even a mixed cabin considering the flight on AC to Dubai would be in J. Some poor soul would assume they were flying First Class all the way lol.

Need to find a way to bypass Dubai completely when trying to book with Aeroplan to the Indian subcontinent