Emirates to Reduce Flights During Runway Work at Dubai International Airport
Thursday, 17 April 2014
Emirates aircraft at Dubai International Airport
DUBAI – Emirates airline have announced it will reduce flights to 41 destinations, and change timings on some of its flights, during runway work at Dubai International airport starting 1 May 2014 taking a 1 billion AED 1 billion ($272 million) revenue lose.

Tim Clark, president of Emirates Airline stated: “Customers who have booked to fly with us, or are considering to fly with us during this time, can be assured that it is business as usual. 

"On routes where Emirates has had to reduce frequency, we have upgraded to bigger aircraft where possible to recover part of the capacity. We have done a lot of preparation work behind the scenes together with all airport stakeholders, to ensure that there will be as little inconvenience to our customers as possible, and we look forward to resuming our full schedule of flights in July.

“As the biggest operator at Dubai International accounting for about 50% of traffic, of course we have had to take the biggest hit in reducing flights. There will be an impact on our revenues to the tune of approximately AED 1 billion. 

However, we understand the need for this upgrading work to be done, and we support it wholeheartedly. It will add much-needed capacity to the airport, and having world-class infrastructure ultimately means a better experience for customers. So we have to take the long-term view and manage the short term pain.”

Emirates will ground 20 aircraft in May, 22 in June, and 22 in July, as both runways at Dubai International will close for resurfacing and upgrades to the aircraft's GCS (global communications suite) that requires about 2,200 man hours of mechanical and avionic work per aircraft. 

The Emirates Engineering team will carry out its first-ever landing gear change to a Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. The program will eventually include over 70 other Emirate Boeing 777 aircraft. The landing gear change work occurs once every 10 years in the aircraft’s lifespan.

All Emirates passenger flights will continue to operate from Dubai International Airport (DXB) during the runway work period from 1 May to 20 July, while the freighter operations will move to Al Maktoum International at Dubai World Central (DWC) on 1 May.
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