Update: Emirates is launching daily flights from Dubai to Barcelona to Mexico City as of December 9, 2019.
For several years now, Emirates has been wanting to launch flights to Mexico City. The problem is that there’s no way they could operate a Dubai to Mexico City route nonstop in both directions, given the altitude of Mexico City Airport, which greatly limits the distance planes can fly when departing there.
Earlier this year it looked like Emirates had found a way to make the route work, as Emirates announced that they intend to fly between Dubai and Mexico City as of later this year. The plan was for the service to be operated via Barcelona in both directions, and Emirates would have pick-up rights there.
This seemed like a brilliant plan, given that:
- Barcelona is almost directly on the way between Dubai and Mexico City
- There’s demand for travel between Barcelona and Mexico City, yet no airline operates the route
So, it’s now approaching the time when Emirates was supposed to launch the route, so what has happened?
Emirates won’t fly to Mexico after all
Unfortunately media in Mexico is reporting that Emirates no longer intends to fly between Barcelona and Mexico City. Why? Because Mexico wouldn’t grant Emirates slots to operate the flights on a daily basis. Rather they could only get permission to operate the flight 3x weekly, and Emirates didn’t find that to be worthwhile.
While other airlines might like operating a flight three times per week, Emirates is an airline that operates daily in a vast majority of markets, so this didn’t work for them.
The airline as well as Spanish authorities say they’re disappointed, and Emirates says they hope to still fly to Mexico at some point in the future. It’s disappointing that it’s not happening now, though.
Will Aeromexico follow through on their temper tantrum?
When it was first announced that Emirates would launch flights between Mexico City and Barcelona, Aeromexico threw a temper tantrum. This is in spite of the fact that they didn’t operate the route themselves. They threatened legal action against Emirates. In part they said the following:
“We are going to review all the legal mechanisms that are within our reach. We are going to give our battle. It may even affect connectivity, because if they sell subsidized tickets to us they take us out of the market. If they take us out and we are not competitive on our flights to Europe, we will have to reduce the offer.”
“But to allow a non-European airline to fly to Mexico, to allow it to fly to Barcelona, which does not contribute anything because it is subsidized. What they are doing is putting at risk the sources of work in Mexico and we strongly disagree. We can not compete with an airline that receives billions of dollars in subsidies.”
“They do not contribute anything, they must not be here and must not displace Mexican sources of employment. If you want to open a Mexico-Dubai flight we have no problem, but not Mexico-Barcelona.”
Once Emirates announced they’d fly between Mexico City and Barcelona, Aeromexico copied them and also said they’d operate the route, but then just days later changed their mind and canceled the route.
So, now that Emirates won’t operate the flight, will Aeromexico put their money where their mouth is and actually operate this route? After all, this is all about Mexican sources of employment and providing passengers with more options, right?
Bottom line
Emirates has been wanting to fly to Mexico City for years, and I know they’ve been working with several European governments to secure fifth freedom rights. Unfortunately it looks like they still haven’t been able to secure viable slots, as they weren’t happy with 3x weekly flights.
So while Emirates will eventually likely make it to Mexico City, that time won’t be now, unfortunately.
EK should just extend theif FLL flight to MEX and back.
I'd like to read a comments section one day (anywhere, on any topic ), that's is devoid of pro Trump trolls reporting fake stuff, and anti Trump "woke" folks losing their minds and calling them names.
"What they are doing is putting at risk the sources of work in Mexico and we strongly disagree."
Funny how Mexico doesn't seem to have a problem doing the same thing to other countries.
"They do not contribute anything, they must not be here and must not displace Mexican sources of employment."
Mexico why you so raciss?
Back to avaition, AFAIK 777 at hot&high is restricted by takeoff speed - the speed the tires can cover. Hence longer runways don't help with the problem and until Emirates get something new, they probably won't fly mex-dxb nonstop.
It is one of the reasons why SA/IB stuck with A340 - JNB/MAD are quite hot&high.
Robert Hanson are you saying this will continue forever? It's easy to juice up the economy in the short term. What happens in the long term?
I will vote for Republicans everytime and give them everything they ask for with one caveat. If things don't work as they envision within certain time frame, all Republicans should be publicly shot as traitors. They always steal short term AMD screw up long term. We relive this BS...
Robert Hanson are you saying this will continue forever? It's easy to juice up the economy in the short term. What happens in the long term?
I will vote for Republicans everytime and give them everything they ask for with one caveat. If things don't work as they envision within certain time frame, all Republicans should be publicly shot as traitors. They always steal short term AMD screw up long term. We relive this BS again and again. Already trump is unable to balance the budget and wants to cut Medicare and social security. Like this is even a surprise. Not sure why the rest of Americans treat Republicans with kid gloves. They are lying, thieving scum
Aeromexico threw a temper tantrum or their puppet master DL threw it for them. Who do you think really pulls the strings at AM?
@robert Hanson.... you dumb Trumper who drinks in all the BS from the worst administration of any first world country... ever. Find some integrity, a soul, or an IQ above 50.
@roberthanson. Wages in the United States only increased 4.83 percent in June of 2018 over the same month in the previous year versus a historical average of 6.22 percent from 1960 until 2018.
Not sure if the use of the comma after only 2 numeric places was meant to represent the European decimal point, in which case, 400 new manufacturing jobs is nothing to celebrate.
And Overall US unemployment is only at an...
@roberthanson. Wages in the United States only increased 4.83 percent in June of 2018 over the same month in the previous year versus a historical average of 6.22 percent from 1960 until 2018.
Not sure if the use of the comma after only 2 numeric places was meant to represent the European decimal point, in which case, 400 new manufacturing jobs is nothing to celebrate.
And Overall US unemployment is only at an 18 year low @ 3.9%. Not a 49 year low as you state. Furthermore, it fell from 9.2% to 4.7% under the Obama presidency.
There goes those gosh darn data points again... #troll
@ nazgul
Since Trump was elected, there has been a return of around 400,00 US manufacturing jobs; the ones that Obama said "will never come back" (sic).
Overall US unemployment is at a 49 year low. Unemployment of several minority groups is at an historic low. Unemployment of women is at a multi-decade low.
Wages are now rising for the first time in nearly forever. Meanwhile Federal taxes for middle class workers...
@ nazgul
Since Trump was elected, there has been a return of around 400,00 US manufacturing jobs; the ones that Obama said "will never come back" (sic).
Overall US unemployment is at a 49 year low. Unemployment of several minority groups is at an historic low. Unemployment of women is at a multi-decade low.
Wages are now rising for the first time in nearly forever. Meanwhile Federal taxes for middle class workers have been reduced.
Which parts of that do you have a problem with? ;)
MEX is slot limited since it is at capacity. Once the new airport opens, there will be less political cover for opposition
EK can actually operate the return flight MEX-DXB non-stop. It's the flight to MEX that is a problem.
Something tells me EK have sth have their sleeve on this route......I wouldn't be surprised if the route does indeed get launched via somewhere else.....
And how much of Delta's lobbying went into this?
That Aeromexico rebuttal is so poorly constructed and written with such a non-compelling argument. It's like a Trump statement, "this is bad, very bad, we will lose jobs... a tremendous number of jobs...the Arabs, very bad, they want to take our jobs...."
The united states needs to build an island in the middle of the Atlantic, claim the entire Atlantic as US territory and give free landing rights to any airline that wants to land there. Then this will work.
Oh and it should shoot and sink any Chinese vessel that enters the US sovereign territory of atlantic. Do the same for Pacific too.
Brilliant plan!
Will
Possibly yes,
But the aircraft limitations might apply; meaning MTOW
The physical amount of fuel that can go in the fuel tanks of the 77W for such a long flight, when considering the summer heat in DXB for take off and the altitude in Mexico are a bad match !
Wouldn’t EK be able to fly non-stop from DXB to MEX oncethe new airport gets built? I’ve heard it’s supposed to have runways over 16000 ft long.