Emirates Airline reduces frequencies on 5 US routes

Middle East’s leading carrier Dubai-based Emirates Airline has reduced its frequencies on 5 of its 12 routes to United States citing federal government directives over travel ban to some select countries. Media reports said that effective from May 1, 2017 daily flights services between Dubai and Fort Lauderdale have been reduced to five flights per week. The airline has also similarly reduced flights on its Dubai-Orlando route from May 23 onwards.

According to the reports, the flights between Dubai and Seattle being operated twice daily has also been reduced to a daily service effective from June 1 this year. The reports further stated that flights on Dubai-Boston route has also been reduced from June 2, while flights between Dubai and Los Angeles will also see a reduction from July 1 onwards this year.

Emirates Airline in a statement released to the media said that it has been prompted to curtail services on some US routes because of the federal government regulations regarding entry visas issuance, restrictions on electronic devices in aircraft cabins and heightened security vetting. These actions have directly impacted the customers resulting in low air travel demand to the United States.

A spokesperson of Emirates Airline while speaking to media said that the airline’s operations in the United States witnessed appreciable performance and healthy growth until the start of 2017. However, with the change of government in the country the past three months had been rather turbulent with significant decline in bookings on all of the US routes. Seeing the present trends the airline had therefore decided to redeploy capacity on other routes on its global network in order to maintain growth and profitability, just in a way as other profit-oriented enterprise would do.

Emirates Airline had at the same time also reiterated that despite the present troublesome phase it nevertheless remains committed to its US operations and would reinstate and grow whenever the situation becomes viable. The 12 US routes being currently served by the airline include Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Washington DC, Boston, Newark Liberty and New York JFK.