Emirates suspends Melbourne-Auckland route from March

Dubai - Emirates to examine more non-stop flights from Dubai to New Zealand.

Qantas and Emirates today announced additional network changes under their joint partnership which provide customers with greater year round frequency and more services between Australia and New Zealand.
These changes reflect customer demand and the airlines' respective network strengths and provide more options for customers to travel between Australia and New Zealand to Asia, the UK/Europe, Middle East and Africa.
From March 2018, Emirates will stop flying from Melbourne and Brisbane to Auckland and instead focus on its non-stop Auckland-Dubai service. Emirates will retain its existing daily A380 flights from Dubai to Christchurch via Sydney, and the airline is also evaluating potential new direct services between New Zealand and Dubai.
At the same time, to provide greater choice across the Tasman Sea, Qantas will increase the frequency of its services between the two countries, adding seven new return flights per week between Melbourne and Auckland and an extra two return services per week between Brisbane and Auckland. Some of these services will be up-gauged from a 737 to a wide-body A330.
Qantas' new trans-Tasman services will carry Emirates code and will connect seamlessly to Qantas' London services via Perth or Singapore and Emirates' services between Australia and Europe via Dubai.
Customers flying between Australia and New Zealand, particularly business travellers, will benefit from the improved schedule choice.
The changes also enable Emirates to reschedule its Australia flights to create a better spread of departure times throughout the day, offering customers more choice when connecting and arriving in to the 38 European and 28 Middle East and North African destinations served by the airline's popular A380 and 777 aircraft.
These latest changes are included in the airlines' application to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, ACCC, and New Zealand Minister of Transport for the extension of authorisation for the airlines' joint business for another five years.
The airlines' joint submission also includes, as previously announced, Qantas' re-routing of its Sydney-London service via Singapore rather than Dubai and Emirates' new, fourth daily A380 Sydney-Dubai service.
President of Emirates airline, Sir Tim Clark, said the first five years of the partnership has been a success.
"Re-authorisation of the partnership will allow us to leverage our combined network strengths to offer customers even more flight choices and reciprocal benefits for our millions of frequent flyer members. It will enable us to continue developing world-class customer experiences, and contribute to stimulating increased opportunities for international trade, tourism and commerce."
Qantas Group CEO, Alan Joyce, said the network changes outlined in the airlines' submission to the regulators provide even more options for customers.
"Since 2013, we have delivered more choice and a larger network to eight million passengers who have travelled more than 65 billion kilometres on our joint network. We are now enhancing the partnership to reflect customer demand, new aircraft technology and our respective network strengths.
The premise of the partnership has always been that we could serve our customers better 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," he concluded.

Bookings and regulatory approvals
The airlines will shortly seek re-authorisation from relevant regulators, including the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, to continue coordination of pricing, schedules, sales and tourism marketing, under an expanded partnership.
Customers with existing bookings impacted by the changes will be re-accommodated onto the new services or will be given the option to change their flights.
Key changes in effect from march 2018:

• The choice of three hub options between Australia and UK/Europe - Dubai, Perth and Singapore.
• From 25 March 2018, QF 1/2 A380 service will operate Sydney - London via Singapore, replacing one of the existing Sydney - Singapore A330 services. The second Sydney - Singapore daily service will continue to be operated by an A330 aircraft.
• From 25 March 2018, one daily Qantas Melbourne - Singapore service will be upgraded from an A330 to an A380 (QF35/36), with the second three per week service increased to a daily A330 service (QF37/38).

 Key partnership stats since its authorisation in 2013:
More than eight million passengers have travelled on the joint network, travelling more than 65 billion kilometres.

• Frequent Flyer members of both airlines have earned and used points flying on more than five million flights, travelling over 47 billion kilometres on the joint network.
• On average more than 10,000 Emirates passengers have travelled on Qantas' domestic and regional services within Australia each month, increasing to 20,000 during peak periods.
• Customers can access over 2,000 routes on the joint network.
• For Emirates customers, the partnership opens up access to over 60 Australian destinations that Emirates does not serve, and for Qantas customers, it gives access to over 40 cities in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, not served by Qantas.
  

Codeshare destinations connecting the globe:

• Together Qantas and Emirates provide customers with more than 100 codeshare destinations including:
• 33 codeshare destinations in Europe
• 60 codeshare destinations in Australia and New Zealand
• 14 codeshare destinations in Africa and the Middle East
• 2 codeshare destinations in Asia

*Subject to government and regulatory approval.
*Due to traffic right restrictions, Emirates cannot code on Qantas' Perth-London or Singapore-London service but its customers can redeem frequent flyer points on these routes as part of the partnership.