As Italy is reopening its borders for international travellers, Emirates has announced that it will resume flying to Venice and will also increase frequency of flights to Milan as it looks to take advantage of ‘COVID-19 tested flights’.
Venice Resumption
Emirates will resume flying between Dubai International Airport and Venice Marco Polo Airport on 1st July 2021. Initially, it will offer flights 3-times-a-week to increase travel and tourism connectivity between the UAE and Italy. The schedule for the flight is:
- Dubai-Venice
- Departure time: 09:05
- Arrival time: 13:25
- Flight time: 6 hours and 20 minutes
- Flight number: EK135
- Frequency: Tuesdays, Thursdays And Saturdays
- Venice-Dubai
- Departure time: 15:50
- Arrival time: 23:35
- Flight time: 5 hours and 45 minutes
- Flight number: EK136
- Frequency: Tuesdays, Thursdays And Saturdays
Increasing frequency to Milan
The Dubai-based carrier is also increasing the frequency of flights to Milan in July in addition to Venice resumption. This will comprise of a daily service on the Dubai-Milan-New York JFK route, and a 3-weekly return flights between Dubai and Milan.
Emirates also serves Rome with 5-times-a-week flights and Bologna with 3-times-a-week flights. Together, Emirates will operate a total of 21 flights a week to Italy from its Dubai hub. The airline will deploy its Boeing B777-300ER on all the 4 routes.
COVID-19 tested flights to Italy
Earlier this month, Italy launched its ‘COVID-tested flights’ policy for services to and from the US. The new policy allows entire flights full of passengers to enter the country without quarantining as long as they provide a negative RT-PCR test report before boarding the aircraft and also test negative in a Rapid Antigen test upon arrival.
Several US airlines immediately began taking bookings for COVID-tested flights and now, Emirates is doing the same. Italy added United Arab Emirates, Canada and Japan to the list of countries able to apply for Covid-Tested flights on 14th May 2021.
Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum,, Chairman and Chief Executive, Emirates, said:
We welcome the Covid-Tested flight arrangements and would like to thank the Italian and UAE authorities for their ongoing efforts to ease and facilitate international travel. The UAE has a strong and longstanding relationship with Italy and the safe return of air connectivity will help boost mutual trade and tourism. As a global commercial hub, and home to people from more than 200 nations, Dubai and the UAE have spared no effort to keep communities safe from the pandemic – from our world-leading vaccination programme to our bio-safety protocols across all sectors including recreation and entertainment facilities, to schools, businesses and airports. We hope that more countries will consider similar arrangements to facilitate quarantine-free travel.
Starting 2nd June 2021, passengers travelling on Emirates to Italy aged 2 years and above, are required to hold a negative COVID-19 RT-PCR or Rapid Antigen test result. The test must have been performed within 48 hours of departure. Even with the negative test result in hand, passengers must also take a Rapid Antigen swab test on arrival in Italy, at their own cost.
Despite all the precautions, passengers will also be required to fill in a passenger locator form. Travelers must book the test in advance but can pay at the airport. Anyone who doesn’t book online may have to wait longer at the airport.
Note that anyone arriving in Italy on another airline from a different country will have to quarantine and provide negative test results. However, Italy is slowly adding more and more countries to its list of possible Covid-tested flight destinations.
Meanwhile, Emirates recently announced a humanitarian airbridge to India to transport COVID-19 relief items.
What do you think of COVID-tested flights? Do you think that the travellers not needing to quarantine will encourage more people to travel? Let me know in the comments section below.
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