In February of this year, Dubai International Airport (DXB) announced that they would be reducing runway operations from two runways to a single runway, for a 45 day period starting in mid April 2019. This is in order to conduct critical maintenance work on the southern runway, including resurfacing and replacing ground lighting. As Dubai…
Continue reading: Emirates Schedules Massive Flight Reductions In 2019 Due To Runway Maintenance
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For all Australian readers, read this also James you said all Australians routes are affected which is not true as Melbourne remains untouched
James, the reductions are from April 16th not May 16th. And Melbourne is the only Australian route not affected by the changes. EK confirmed that to AusBT earlier today.
Will Emirates ever move to DWC? I think they'd want to have DXB exclusively to themselves (and FlyDubai).
DWC is not capable of handling any significant passenger volume. They learned this the hard way when DXB was shut following the accident in August 2016 and they wound up with dozens of A380 diversions. There were delays of 8+ hours to disembark and process passengers at DWC, eventually resulting in diversions being sent as far afield as Muscat and Kuwait as even second tier A380 diversion airports such as Fujairah and Al Ain filled up. The infrastructure simply doesn't exist at DWC to handle any reasonable passenger volume.
Cargo on the other hand is reasonably efficient at DWC (although operating costs are horrendously expensive compared to other UAE airports).
shame for emirates this seems like a huge loss for them... hopefully things will be better with more runways at Al Maktoum (if/when they move)
Small typo should say 2019, not 2018
"Emirates has today published their initial schedule reductions from April 16 through May 30, 2018, and wow, it’s a HUGE list."
Lost focus when seeing something massive? Not selling your legal credentials with that, matey. Sounds more like a resident Club80 member to be honest.
I was booking to come back next May to Muscat and noticed that there was only one flight. When I did 31st I saw the remaining flights available. So it was because of this. Thanks for the info James.
you forgot Newark:
Dubai – Newark Nonstop sector cancelled, EK223/224 closed for booking (Dubai – Athens – Newark maintains 1 daily)
I think it doubtful this will cause Emirates significant losses. Most people will just book a different Emirates flight - it is not an alliance so passengers choosing Emirates are fairly inelastic, particularly with Etihad scaling down. Obviously there will be some loss of custom but presumably a lot of pilots and air crew will be told to take annual leave at that time which will reduce the number they need to bring in from Etihad. If they have any sense, they will also schedule as much maintenance, deep cleans and refits as possible.
It's easy to see the swings and forget the roundabouts.
Why don't they fly out of DWC (Al Makhtoum) for the duration? Or even AUH?
PS It's a "huge list" only because they are rotating the cuts over many destinations. The actual number of flights cut per day is small.
Just to clarify, I meant why don't they fly A FEW flights out of DWC or AUH? Not their whole schedule.
@ Chuck Lester - I'm guessing its because they don't consider the facilities at DWC to be up to the Emirates standard, so would rather reduce flights than reduce the passenger experience.
@Traveler
Ofcourse they're going to make losses. Many planes will be parked and parked planes don't earn cash. The companies that do retrofits aren't simply going to hire 3times the workforce they need for a period of 6wks just so they can retrofit/do maintaince or EK planes.
@Chuck Lester
Most EK passengers are connecting from one flight to the next and not alot of O&D traffic. The hassle of landing some flights at DXB and having to transport passengers to DWC to connect to their next flights is clearly not worth it.
Seeing as Ramadan is predicted to be May 5th to June 4th in 2019 this is a win win for emirates and Dubai airports authority... I take it the “pilot shortage” from this year will be over by then 😉
I have two flights booked at this time. They still appear as active when I check on the emirates website. Also the person on Emirates live chat checked and she could see no problems. I am concerned as I need to fly at this time and have booked the flights as First Class Qantas Frequent Flyer redemptions and feel I may not get offered an alternative based on previous experience when flights have been canceled by. Does anyone have any experience of what Emirates does in this situation. Will I be offered a new First Class flight, downgraded or just dumped ?
@Paul: I think the only problem you may have is a delay in your flight.
Emirates already changed the schedule on their flights.
Our flight next late April between DXB to MRU is affected, we are on reward booking on F, and the other flight of the same route on the same day do not offer F (reduced from 2x a day to once a day). Does that means we will be rebook as J on the other flight? Our reservation still show no change. Or will they use the plane that offer F that got canceled on the other route?
Doesn't EK have some A380s down at the moment? Couldn't they use them to fill in some of the lost frequency with capacity?