Emirates will be resuming a limited number of passenger flights from Monday, 6 April. The airline grounded all flights after the UAE government banned all flights out of the country.
Emirates Group chief executive Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum announced it had received approval from the UAE to begin flying again and made the announcement over Twitter.
The return to flying will be gradual as opposed to a full service being returned all at once. However, it is unclear exactly which routes the airline will reopen first.
Emirates traffic is reliant on the long-haul transfer market, which also fuels part of the Dubai economy, basing its operations from Dubai Airport.
Emirates has received approval from UAE authorities to start flying a limited number of passenger flights. From 06 April, these flights will initially carry travellers outbound from the UAE. Details will be announced soon. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/fnhLxQanIM
— HH Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum (@HHAhmedBinSaeed) April 2, 2020
The announcement came after Dubai’s Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed tweeted that the government is planning to inject equity into the carrier to see it through the current coronavirus pandemic.
The government of the United Arab Emirates joins a number of others that are offering state aid to assist airlines in traversing this period of low demand in order to help economies recover once this crisis is over.
The exact nature of the bailout is yet to be revealed.
Other overnight developments include:
- Lufthansa will now only serve 18 long-haul flights a week. The flag carrier of Germany will operate this limited schedule through 3 May.
- airBaltic’s Boeing 737s won’t reappear in the fleet once the airline resumes operations. The Latvian airline has three Boeing 737s remaining in its fleet, however, it has for a long time been eyeing solely Airbus A220 operations.
- Royal Air Maroc became the first African airline to join the OneWorld alliance.
- Brussels Airlines, a member of the Lufthansa Group, is reported to be in ‘virtual bankruptcy’ and may be re-nationalised.
- Qatar Airways will be suspending flights to New York (JFK) as well as Madrid and Barcelona. This comes as a response to decreasing demand amid increasing travel restrictions.
- British Airways is expected to make no staff redundant as a result of the current aviation crisis. However, it will come at the cost of 36,000 employees being suspended, according to sources.
- Air New Zealand has flipped its entire flight schedule in an effort to stop ghost flights, over 7,000 flights will be cancelled as the new schedule is rolled out.
