Emirates adds Hamburg-New York

Emirates’ launch of the Dubai–Hamburg–New York flight on Sunday received a rousing welcome at Hamburg Airport on the same day that the airline marked the launch of its five weekly flights to Tunis, eight to Indian IT-hub Bangalore, a third daily service to New York and a second daily service to Zurich. In all, 27 new Emirates flights per week have been added with more than 7500 seats and 400 tones of cargo capacity. Emirates is on target to serve 100 international destinations by 2012 including the five times weekly flight to Dubai and Malta from Larnaca.

 

Emirates ‘cancels order of A340s’ 

Dubai-based airline Emirates has cancelled an order for long-range Airbus A340-600 aircraft.

“We will not be taking delivery of these planes,” Emirates spokesman Mike Simon told the Reuters news agency.

Emirates had ordered 12 of the four-engine planes and options for eight more in 2003 for delivery in May.

But an Airbus spokesman said it was not aware of any cancellation and its order book showed Emirates still earmarked to take delivery of 18 of the planes.

The move comes after the airline said earlier in October that it may cancel some of its order for 43 giant Airbus A380 planes if there are any further delays to the troubled project.

Emirates said at the time that it planned to “stick with the order for now”, but that “cancellations” remained an option.

Its comments came after Airbus had said production setbacks would lead to a two-year delay in A380 deliveries.

The European planemaker has warned of “painful job losses” ahead as it shakes up the flagship superjumbo project.