Emirates to launch daily flights to Cyprus, Malta

Emirates will increase the frequency of its Dubai-Larnaca flights from five a week to a daily schedule starting from December 1, setting a target to raise the number of passengers it carries to Cyprus from 100,000 in 2007 to 120,000 by the end of this year.
Nabil Sultan, Senior VP, Commercial Operations Europe, inaugurated the airline’s refurbished head office on Nicosia’s busy Makarios Ave. this week, recalling that he had been here for the start of operations 14 years ago. Only then, he was a management trainee.
Sultan said that to date, passenger traffic was already 15% up on last year, despite a downturn in the world economy and increasing fuel costs throughout this year.
The secret to Emirates’ success, he said, is that being a flexible hub with a brand new air terminal and concourse coming online this week, the airline can shift its business away from the highly competitive or depressed European markets and look towards new markets in Asia and Africa. This is why it is continuously adding new destinations and expanding its network and fleet.
“We try to predict the next trends, we have the right plans, costs are contained and we constantly make forecasts in areas where we need to generate traffic.”
“The Middle East and Africa offer new territories for tourism and both Dubai and Cyprus are seen as providing a good combination of beautiful resorts on this island with shopping opportunities in Dubai,” Sultan said.
The 190-minute flight continues on to Malta and stops over again at Larnaca on its way back, opening up new opportunities for leisure travel to Cyprus.
Cargo has also enjoyed an increase on the Cyprus leg, Sultan said, adding that volume reached 2,600 tonnes last year, due mainly to the wide-body Boeing 777s used on this route. Outbound cargo mainly comprised pharmaceuticals, vegetables and cigars, while inbound cargo included textiles, clothing, PCs, mobile phones and spare parts.
Paul Fleri Soler, Emirates’ Manager for Cyprus and Malta, said that the second leg from Valetta attracted some 6,000 tourists last year, as Cyprus is featured prominently by the airline’s subsidiary, Emirates Holidays, that sold worldwide holiday packages to 2.4 mln tourists last year.
Sultan added business passenger traffic is also on the rise due to the demand from the financial and construction sectors in Dubai, while air fares are also being adjusted downwards depending on the world oil markets, explaining that it takes 2-3 months for a crude price cut to trickle down to the passenger.
“The cost of fuel coming down to reasonable levels will help us tremendously,” Sultan said, concluding that launches for new destinations such as Los Angeles on October 26 and San Francisco on December 1 remain unaffected.