Analyses: December 2011 Archives

The schedule is below

EK071 DXB 0355 - 0905 CDG 77W 1357 (NEW)

EK073 DXB 0820 - 1330 CDG 388 D

EK075 DXB 1500 - 2010 CDG 77W D

EK072 CDG 1110 - 1910 DXB 77W 1357

EK074 CDG 1535 - 0015+1 DXB 388 D

EK076 CDG 2150 - 0620+1 DXB 77W D

 Emirates' emerging third daily European bank already features four flights to key European cities. These are

EK007 to London Heathrow, departing DXB at 0230

EK011 to London Gatwick, departing DXB at 0250

EK021 to Manchester, departing DXB at 0300

EK043 to Frankfurt, departing DXB at 0320

 It is only a matter of time when Emirates will add new flights to this bank, operating to possibly Birmingham, Milan, Rome, Zurich and more cities. These flights will be well fed from the traffic arriving from the rest of Emirates network, mainly originating out of South Asia.

 Connections for the return flights, which form the third daily European arrivals bank for the airline - between 1900 and 2000 local time in Dubai, are also taken care of with plenty of departures in the following departure bank.

 

Emirates now operates almost 50 daily flights to Europe, with the largest share still belonging to the 0700-0900 departure bank out of Dubai.

 Nevertheless, Emirates growth story is unlikely to take a rest any time soon and it is believed that Barcelona and Stockholm might be among the airline's next new stops in Europe. And with the addition of Qatar Airways' fifth daily flight to London Heathrow, it would not be surprising to see Emirates upgrade another of its daily Heathrow flights to an Airbus A380.

 With this set of traffic, Qantas Airways seems to be the airline that is set to lose the most. However, Scoot's own parent Singapore Airlines will clearly get hurt in their yields if they continue the same aircraft mix after Scoot's entry.

 While Scoot might have chosen Sydney as their first destination owing to the fact that AirAsia X does not fly there, this move is very unlikely to have a significant impact on AirAsia X for the foreseeable future. AirAsia X's (and AirAsia's) larger network gives it the edge to profitably face this challenge by focusing on the areas where it already has a strong foothold. Sydney is still very much a premium market compared to elsewhere in Australia and the low fares catchment could be smaller.
 Even if SIA might have hoped for it, the effect on Emirates from this move would be close to zero, unless Scoot launches flights to UK, Italy or Lebanon any time soon.

 One has to wonder whether this means SIA has shoot on its own foot. But it really is not, as Scoot will achieve SIA's target on scaring away the competitors. On a strategical level, it's a mixed move. But they could have done a lot better.