Emirates is suspending flights to Australia’s three largest cities due to “operational reasons”, the world’s largest airline by international passengers announced on Saturday.
The last flights to Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane will be on January 20 and customers for those cities will not be accepted for travel at their point of origin. Emirates did not say when the flights would resume.
Australia all but closed its borders to travellers last year to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Arrivals are capped, and those who do enter have to undergo a strict quarantine for two weeks. Many of its citizens abroad have struggled to get home.
Emirates on Monday announced a resumption of non-stop services to a number of cities in the United States.
The Dubai-based airline said it will restart services to Seattle from February 1, and Dallas and San Francisco from March 2.
The addition of these three destinations will take Emirates’ North American network to 10 destinations following the resumption of services to Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York JFK, Toronto and Washington DC.
In South America, Emirates said it will also be introducing a fifth weekly flight to Sao Paulo from February 5.
The announcements come as Emirates has gradually restarted operations across its network and currently serves 114 destinations on six continents.
Since it resumed tourism activity in July, Dubai remains one of the world’s most popular holiday destinations, especially during the winter season.
Last November, Emirates Group announced a half-year net loss of AED14.1 billion ($3.8 billion), citing the impact of coronavirus for a huge downturn in revenue.
Group revenue was AED13.7 billion for the first six months of 2020-21, down 74 percent. It was the first loss reported in the company’s history.
The airline said the dramatic revenue decline was due to the Covid-19 pandemic which brought global air passenger travel to a halt for many weeks as countries closed their borders and imposed travel restrictions.
As part of pandemic containment measures, Emirates’ hub in Dubai suspended scheduled passenger flights for eight weeks during April and May.
* With Bloomberg
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