Dubai: Emirates airline will expand its operations in and out of South Africa, boosting its schedule to 28 weekly flights by October.
This is the airline’s largest weekly schedule to South Africa since the start of the pandemic. The ramp up of operations will see double daily flights to Johannesburg, including the introduction of Emirates’ A380 on one of the daily flights, in addition to daily services to both Cape Town and Durban.
The new frequencies and capacity increases across all of the airline’s gateways in South Africa are effective from October 31, 2021. From January 1, 2022, Emirates will serve Johannesburg with double daily A380 services.
Emirates’ flight schedule expansion comes in response to a surge in customer demand to Dubai as tourist visas have opened up for all nationalities, in addition to the easing of restrictions across some destinations that now allow quarantine-free entry for South Africans.
Emirates said that Dubai had welcomed over 4 million overnight leisure and business visitors since it reopened in July 2020.
Travel rules
South African travellers visiting Dubai must present a negative COVID-19 PCR test certificate with a QR code issued within 48 hours of the time the sample was collected at an approved local health facility.
Travellers to Dubai must also present a Rapid PCR test report with a QR code for a test conducted at the departure airport within six hours of departure. Passengers arriving in Dubai will be required to take another COVID-19 PCR test on arrival at Dubai International airport.
All passengers transiting in Dubai must complete all the requirements of their final destination.
