Emirates

Emirates CEO has officially announced that the next batch of A 380s that the airline will be receiving from Airbus will have 28 extra economy class seats thus increasing capacity from 489 to 517 and will be primarily used on the London Heathrow route. EK too confirmed that it has put on hold configuring many of its A 380s into a 2 class (J and Y) 620 seater to be used on high density Indian Subcontinent, Jeddah and Far East Asia routes until the worldwide economy picks up again.

In addition, EK has revealed few capacity changes on the GDS for its network which will come into effect from Dec 1st 09 onwards. They are as follows:

DAR - capacity increased from daily A 343 to daily B 773ER.

THR - frequencies increased from 17 to 19 weekly flights using a combination of B 773As and B 773ERs for all the flights.

CAN - capacity increased from daily A 332 to daily 3 class configured B 773ER.

CMN - capacity reduced from a daily B 773ER to a daily A 343.

Analysis:

The capacity increase to both DAR and CAN are surprising to say the least because it will be a 3 class configured B 77W that would be used on both routes. This begs the question as to why EK is using an aircraft with a first class cabin on these 2 routes which have virtually zero first class demand year round! IKA too has seen a huge capacity increase this year as previously, one could recall that it was 17 weekly A 332s in April 2009 and now its B 773s all the time!