Emirates comes of age in NZ skies
Emirates is pulling out of more trans-Tasman flights, canning its Brisbane and Melbourne to Auckland routes from March, but may add more New Zealand to Dubai direct services.
The New Zealand-Australia gap will be filled by Qantas Airways, the airlines said yesterday, as they unveiled more details of their extended partnership, pending Australian regulatory approval.
Qantas will add seven return flights a week between Melbourne and Auckland, and two more Brisbane to Auckland flights.
It will also change some of the planes flying the Tasman from Boeing 737-800s to a wide-body Airbus A330s.
Ensuring adequate transTasman services was a requirement of Australian regulators when the two teamed up in 2013.
‘‘Reauthorisation of the partnership will allow us to leverage our combined network strengths,’’ Emirates’ airline president, Sir Tim Clark, said.
The move signals Emirates’ coming of age in the Kiwi market as it focuses on its own long-haul New Zealand to Dubai flights.
It suggests the airline has enough customers and market presence in New Zealand to leave trans-Tasman flights to Qantas, which can serve the route more efficiently with smaller aircraft.
The only Emirates transTasman service to stay is Christchurch to Dubai via Sydney.
For passengers, while there may be some pushback over having smaller planes for transTasman flights, flight frequency will increase.
The bosses of both airlines were in Sydney yesterday to sign the new agreement, one they say reflects customer demand, new aircraft technology and the airlines’ respective network strengths.
Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said: ‘‘The premise of the partnership has always been that we could serve our customers bet- ter together. That’s certainly been true for the past five years and now we’re evolving our joint network so we can serve them even better for the next five.
‘‘Like all of these partnerships they do evolve. What’s clear here is that we’ve become more reliant on Emirates because it’s become very good at taking people to Europe. Similarly … they’ve become more reliant on Qantas feeding traffic into their network.’’
Joyce was ‘‘quietly confident’’ the regulators would rubber-stamp the extended partnership.
The airlines began working together in 2013 to share revenue and passengers flying from Australia to Europe through Emirates’ Dubai hub. Neither party has disclosed the exact details or finances of the arrangement.
In August, Qantas and Emirates said they planned to extend the partnership for a further five years, pending Australian regulatory approval, and unveiled changes from March 2018 including Qantas dropping Dubai as its stopover en route to Europe and returning to a Singapore stopover, as well as some changes to the capacity and frequency of Australia to Singapore flights.
Qantas had already said its Melbourne to London service will fly non-stop to Europe out of Perth on its new Boeing 787 Dreamliners starting in March, meaning the airline will not have any flights to Dubai. This is seen as part of its positioning to capitalise on a booming Asian market.
Centre for Aviation commentary ahead of the August news said Qantas had the upper hand in the partnership, but that it was worthwhile for Emirates to maintain the deal to avoid Qantas teaming up with an Emirates competitor.
Yesterday’s move is a strong signal from Emirates that it has built a strong enough presence in the New Zealand market to go it alone on long-haul routes.
According to the airlines, since 2013 more than 8 million passengers have travelled on the joint network, travelling more than 65 billion kilometres.
❚ The writer travelled to Sydney courtesy of Emirates and Qantas Airways.