With an upgrade on its third daily flight, Emirates Airlines now provides an all Airbus A380 service to Melbourne

Emirates will provide an all-A380 service from Melbourne when it upgrades its third daily flight from the Australian city, EK408 and EK409, from a Boeing 777-300ER to an A380 operation.

The move will add 945 seats per week to the Australian city from 25 March 2018, representing a 10% increase in capacity. This means Emirates customers can enjoy even more seamless “A380 to A380” connections via its hub in Dubai to 18 points in the UK and Europe.

The additional weekly seats on the route will support more business and leisure travel between Dubai and Melbourne and together with Qantas’ new Melbourne, via Perth, London B789 Dreamliner service beginning on the 24th March 2018, offers customers more options to London and Europe under the joint partnership.

The popular Emirates A380 offers 489 seats in a three-class cabin configuration with 14 private suites in First Class, 76 flat-bed seats in Business Class and 399 spacious seats in Economy.

Passengers in all classes can enjoy over 2,500 channels of the latest films, TV shows, music, and games on Emirates’ ice Digital Widescreen, which has been named World’s Best Inflight Entertainment at the prestigious Skytrax World Airline Awards for a record 12 years running.

First and Business Class passengers on the Emirates A380 can spend time during their flight socialising in the iconic Onboard Lounge on the upper deck of the aircraft, and First Class passengers can enjoy the exclusive use of the on-board shower spas to refresh during flights. Premium customers are also offered complimentary chauffeur drive to and from Melbourne airport, lounge access and priority check-in.

Melbourne was Emirates’ first Australian destination, when the airline started flights with a three-times-weekly service in 1996. Since then, Melbourne has remained an important and popular destination on the airline’s global network and over the past 20 years, Emirates has gradually added flights and upgraded capacity on the route to meet consumer demand. Today, with 21 weekly flights to Melbourne – two non-stop to Dubai, and one via Singapore – Emirates enables convenient connections to popular destinations including Emirates’ six cities in UK & Ireland as well as Rome, Paris, Athens and Emirates’ newest route, Zagreb, launching on 1 June. Emirates also operates a daily service between Melbourne and Auckland, which is the only A380 service operating between the two cities.

Aside from Melbourne, Emirates also operates flights to Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, with a combined total of 77 weekly services to Australia per week, of which 49 are currently operated by an A380.

Emirates is the world’s largest A380 operator with 95 of this iconic double-decked aircraft in its fleet and a further 47 on order. The flagship of Emirates’ all wide-body fleet, the A380 is extremely popular with travellers for its comfort and industry-leading features onboard. A 2014 Deloitte study estimated that the change from a Boeing 777 to an A380 international service at a major Australian airport will contribute AU$63 million in value added and generate an estimated 740 full time jobs per year*. Similar benefits can be expected from Emirates’ planned upgrade at Melbourne. Since 2008, Emirates has flown over 80 million passengers on its A380 fleet.