Emirates will soon introduce a new aircraft type to its fleet, the Airbus A350. The airline is anticipated to take the delivery of the first of its 65 A350-900s on order in August 2024. The airline today announced the first set of destinations which the A350 will serve. Let’s take a look at it.
Emirates Airbus A350’s inaugural route
Emirates’ Airbus A350 aircraft will enter commercial service in September 2024. The airline plans to deploy its latest aircraft type to 9 destinations in the coming months.
Emirates will operate its first A350 to Bahrain on the daily EK839/840 service from 15th September 2024. Frequency of A350 services will progressively increase to cover two Bahrain services with the second service starting on 1st November 2024. From the next day (16th September 2024), Emirates A350 will start flying on the daily EK853/854 service.
Emirates A350 – More routes
From 27th October 2024, the A350 will be deployed on flights EK502/503 to Mumbai and flights EK538/539 to Ahmedabad.
Edinburgh will rejoin the Emirates network with flights operated by A350s starting 4th November 2024. The carrier says that more information regarding this will be shared soon.
Starting 1st December 2024, Muscat’s daily EK866/867 will be served by the A350 while Lyon and Bologna will also be served daily from the same day.
Finally, from 1st January 2025, Colombo’s fourth daily service EK654/655 will be served by the A350.
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Emirates A350 details
First set of Emirates A350s will be used for short-to-medium haul flights covering destinations in the Middle East, West Asia and Europe. The airline is expected to take delivery of 10 A350-900s by 31st March 2025. These first 10 Emirates A350 aircraft will offer three cabin classes, with 32 “next generation” Business Class seats, 21 seats in Premium Economy, and 259 “generously pitched” Economy Class seats, for a total of 312 seats.
The A350 will be a game-changer for Emirates, enabling us to serve regional points with superior operating efficiency and flexibility across the Middle East and GCC, West Asia and Europe. With the latest generation cabin products including more of our sought-after Premium Economy to more cities, top-notch in-flight entertainment technologies and an abundance of other customer-friendly features, the Emirates A350 builds on our long-standing commitment of investing in the very best customer experience in the sky. Flying the A350 to 9 cities in such a short span of time adds more premium cabin options and choice across geographies for our customers, and ensures we maintain our competitive edge and industry leading position.
Adnan Kazim, Deputy President and Chief Commercial Officer, Emirates Airline said.
With the A350s, Emirates will introduce Premium Economy for the first time on Middle East/GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) routes. By February 2025, Emirates Premium Economy will be available on flights to 42 destinations, including those on A380s, B777s and A350s.
Emirates says that more A350 destinations and cabin details will be announced “in the coming months”.
First Class?
Emirates specifically mentions that the first 10 A350-900s will be used for short-to-medium haul flights. I am wondering whether the next set of A350s will feature First Class and be used for long-haul flights. While we can’t say anything for sure, it can certainly be the case.
Also, Emirates says that the first 10 A350s will have 32 Business Class seats. Does this signal that Emirates will finally go with 1-2-1 configuration for its “next generation” business class seats? The Dubai-based airline has to certainly up its Business Class game to compete with its Middle Eastern rivals. Although there’s an “updated” Business Class cabin on the refurbished A380s in 1-2-1 layout, the 2-2-2 configured Business Class on B777s is certainly outdated and hopefully the airline won’t go with this configuration on the A350s too.
Featured image by Emirates
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