Emirates Adds Zurich to A380 Network in 2014

Emirates Airline has revealed that the Swiss city of Zurich will be the latest destination to welcome regular Airbus A380 services after confirming it will significantly increase capacity on its twice daily link to Zurich from Dubai with effect from January 1, 2014. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) carrier will substitute the Boeing 777-300ER used on one of the daily rotations with the larger Super Jumbo, offering an increased capacity of more than 1,100 additional seats every week in each direction.

“The strategic decision to bring our flagship A380 to Zurich was made to support the city’s strong position as a financial services hub and centre for a vast number of international companies. There has been robust demand for business and leisure traffic and the extra capacity will stimulate more trade and tourism between Switzerland, the UAE and emerging markets eastbound - including 10 destinations in India and 24 destinations in the Far East and Australasia - connecting both people and economies.”

Thierry Antinori
Executive Vice President, Passenger Sales Worldwide, Emirates Airline

“The strategic decision to bring our flagship A380 to Zurich was made to support the city’s strong position as a financial services hub and centre for a vast number of international companies. There has been robust demand for business and leisure traffic and the extra capacity will stimulate more trade and tourism between Switzerland, the UAE and emerging markets eastbound - including 10 destinations in India and 24 destinations in the Far East and Australasia - connecting both people and economies,” said Thierry Antinori, Executive Vice President, Passenger Sales Worldwide, Emirates Airline.

“Travellers from Switzerland will soon be able to enjoy the Emirates’ A380, being seamlessly connected through the Dubai hub to our dynamically growing network, providing connectivity to global hubs in Asia and Australia such as Bangkok, Sydney and Singapore. These markets, which are positioned as economic and tourism centres, are served with multiple daily flights,” added Antinori.

The A380 capacity boost on the flights to Zurich will further stimulate trade between the UAE and Switzerland, supporting a buoyant $9 billion trade relationship, according the UAE Ministry of Foreign Trade. Over 169 Swiss companies operate in Dubai and Emirates’ SkyCargo freight business already supports movement of goods such as precious metals, watches, jewelery, heavy machinery and pharmaceuticals, giving local businesses greater access to foreign markets.

Following the debut of the A380 on the Zurich route Emirates will offer more than 870 seats per day between the Swiss city and its Dubai hub. The airline will be using one of its 517-seat A380s on the route providing seating across its two passenger decks for 427 Economy passengers, 76 Business Class travellers and 14 First Class Private Suites for corporate passengers.

“The decision of Emirates to operate its flagship aircraft on one of its two daily flights to Zurich represents another milestone for Zurich Airport and demonstrates the strong demand from travelers for the Emirates product. The upgrade from a Boeing 777 operation to an A380 on the afternoon flight from Zurich is a significant capacity increase and a clear commitment to the Swiss market,” said Thomas Kern, Chief Executive Officer, Zurich Airport.

Emirates Airline is the largest A380 operator in the world, with 34 A380s in its fleet and 56 on order, and has carried almost 17 million passengers since the double decker was introduced five years ago. However, the carrier will not be the first to introduce A380 operations to Zurich as Singapore Airlines, the launch customer for the A380, has been using the type on daily flights from Singapore since March 2010.

The introduction of the aircraft to Zurich makes logical sense with the growing demand the carrier has been witnessing on the route. With strong demand, Emirates introduced the second daily rotation in October 2006, initially with its smallest aircraft, the A330-200, but upguaged to the larger 777-300ER in February 2009, with both rotations being flown exclusively by 777 equipment from December 2010.

In 2012 an estimated 129,000 O&D bi-directional O&D passengers travelled between Dubai and Zurich, a route that is also operated on a daily basis by Swiss International Air Lines. Emirates currently dominates this market and its second rotation and strong onward connection opportunities from Dubai meant it captured approximately a 76 per cent share of the demand in 2012.

In the table below we highlight O&D demand between Dubai and Zurich. Our analysis of Emirates’ traffic suggests that point-to-point traffic equates for around 26.3 per cent of the demand on this route with the largest origin and destination markets for passengers to/from Zurich being the popular Indian Ocean destinations of Male, Maldives; Mauritius and then Colombo, Sri Lanka; Bangkok, Thailand and Mumbai, India.