Daily Trust

Emirates to increase Nigerian frequencie­s to 21

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Emirates airlines has outlined its fleet plans for the year with three additional flights to Abuja beginning from 1st June, 2019, thus increasing the frequency to the Nigerian capital to a daily service and 21 frequencie­s to Nigeria.

The airline made the disclosure, adding that the service will be operated on Emirates Boeing 777-300ER aircraft.

The new service flight EK786 will depart Dubai every day at 10:40hrs and arrive Abuja at 14:55hrs while the return flight EK785 will leave Abuja same day at 18:10hrs.

This is just as it announced adjustment­s to its operationa­l schedules in 2019 to minimise the impact of the closure of Dubai Internatio­nal Airport’s Southern Runway in April and May 2019, and to respond to global travel demand trends.

Emirates said it would deploy additional flights to several markets in Africa starting in June 2019.

Apart from the Abuja additional flights with effect from June 1, Emirates will introduce a second daily flight to Casablanca, Morocco; Conakry, Guinea; and Dakar, Senegal.

Daily Trust reports that Emirates currently operates two daily flights to Lagos, Nigeria’s most viable airport and four flights to Abuja weekly. With the additional three flights beginning from June, the airline would be operating 21 daily flights to Nigeria.

Dubai, UAE, is one of the most lucrative routes for any carrier but no Nigerian airline flies to Dubai at the moment.

Similarly, starting from June 2, 2019, second daily flight will be introduced to Accra, Ghana. Also, between March 31st and October 2019, second daily flights will be introduced to Athens, Greece; three daily flights to Rome, Italy; while daily service will begin once again to Zagreb, Croatia.

President of Emirates Airline, Sir Tim Clark said: “The changes we are implementi­ng in our network schedules in 2019 are in line with this approach, taking into considerat­ion global market dynamics and operationa­l limitation­s including the maintenanc­e work on Dubai Airport’s Southern Runway.”

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