Emirates hails UK demand as it rebuilds schedules

He said current UK bookings were split 50/50 for Dubai itself and for those with onward connections, with Australia, Mauritius, Thailand, India and the Maldives popular.

“Pre-Covid we probably had a higher proportion of ‘beyond’ traffic, but Dubai was the premier winter sun destination and (the delayed) Expo 2020 really helped put Dubai on the map, it’s booming,” he said.

Emirates has its full complement of six Airbus A380 flights a day from Heathrow, but last month agreed to cap further sales of Heathrow flights until mid-August. However, it has not reduced the number of departures, unlike British Airways.

“We’re a much smaller operator than British Airways at Heathrow and we have got through the super-peak at the start of the school holidays.

“We continue to make sure the capacity we have for sale is manageable; we’re in daily discussions and managing our way through the peak, it seems to be under control,” Jewsbury said.

“We did put departures on stop-sell, we have now worked out the available capacity for the terminal and made sure we stay within those limits. We’re in ongoing discussions.”

‘We’ve been prudent’

He said capacity limits varied by time of day and had led to some flights being closed for sale. “We are not cancelling flights or bookings but in any case our flights were pre-booked heavily this summer. I think it’s fair to say we’ve been a little bit prudent, it’s better to add capacity than to backtrack.”

Emirates now has its new Premium Economy cabin on its EK1 and EK3 departures from Dubai to Heathrow and EK2 and EK4 from Heathrow to Dubai, plus the EK412 (Dubai-Sydney) and EK413 (Sydney-Dubai).

Jewsbury said a big retro-fitting programme would start in November, providing more departures with the new cabin option.

Sales so far had primarily been to leisure travellers trading up from economy. “It’s been positioned as economy-plus,” he said. “It’s been a long time in the making and welcomed by customers and trade alike.”