Dubai’s Emirates to launch third daily service to Brisbane

Dubai airline Emirates announced on Friday plans to launch a third daily service to Brisbane, Australia from later this year.

The direct service, beginning on December 1, will be operated by a Boeing 777-200LR aircraft with eight first class, 42 business class and 216 economy class seats.

Emirates said this would increase capacity on the route by 3,724 seats a week and cargo capacity by 14 tonnes between Brisbane and Dubai.

Inbound service EK430 will leave Dubai at 10:00pm and arrive in Brisbane at 6:15pm the following day. Outbound EK431 will leave Brisbane at 10:25pm and arrive in Dubai at 7:00am the next day.

The new flights will operate alongside existing daily services EK434 and EK435, which fly non-stop to Brisbane and onwards to Auckland, New Zealand.

EK432 and Ek433 also fly to Brisbane via Singapore and Australian codeshare partner Qantas flies twice daily to Singapore from Brisbane.

Emirates has also announced plans to upgrade its third daily service to Melbourne from a Boeing 777-300ER to an Airbus A380 from March 25, 2018.

Read: Emirates to fly all A380 to Melbourne as Qantas drops Melbourne-Dubai-London route

Last week, the Dubai carrier announced an 82 per cent drop in annual profit for the first time in five years.

It blamed the decline, to Dhs1.3bn ($354m), on travel restrictions on some US flights and other destabilising events including the UK’s vote to leave the European Union.

Read: Emirates airline posts 82% drop in annual profit