By IANS
Dubai : The United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) national carrier Emirates airline has announced that it will double the number of flights to New Delhi and add two flights a week to Ahmedabad.
“New Delhi took centre stage in 1985 when Emirates commenced global operations. Two decades later, New Delhi once again assumes significance as Emirates’s Indian operations touch a new milestone,” Salem Obaidalla, Emirates’ senior vice-president of commercial operations in West Asia and the Indian Ocean, said in a statement here.
Effective March 30, the Dubai-based carrier will add one flight every Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday to its existing daily service to New Delhi.
From July 2, three more flights – one every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday – will be added.
The new flights, in three class configurations, will add over 1,800 seats and more than 120 tonnes of cargo capacity a week in each direction.
Also, from March 30, the airline will add two weekly flights to Ahmedabad, its latest destination in India, taking its total frequency on the route to eight flights a week.
The new services will be operated with an Airbus A330-200 aircraft.
Obaidalla said the new flight schedules have been planned to maximize late night arrivals in Dubai and seamless onward connections to Emirates’ rapidly expanding global network.
“For corporate travellers the additional flights will facilitate easy connections to international business hubs such as London, New York and Johannesburg via Dubai. Likewise, leisure travellers will benefit from the two to three hours transit time in Dubai when connecting to holiday hotspots like Mauritius,” he said.
The additional flights are an expansion of Emirates’ growing presence in India.
The airline had recently announced plans to launch six flights per week to Kozhikode in Kerala, its 10th Indian destination, from July 1.
The decision closely follows the airline’s major enhancement of services to Mumbai, Chennai, Cochin and Hyderabad over 2007.
Emirates currently operates 99 flights to nine Indian destinations.