Dubai
Less than a week before it launches flights to Edinburgh, Emirates airline has said it will reduce frequencies on the route to five times a week from the initially-planned daily service.
An Emirates spokesperson told Gulf News that the reduction is “due to seasonal adjustments” and will be effective from October 28, which is less than a month after the airline launches services to Edinburgh on October 1. Emirates did not provide more details on why it is reducing frequency on the route after announcing it as a daily service, but said the reduction is temporary till mid-2019.
“After the planned Dubai Airports runway closure for upgrade works between April 16 and May 30, 2019, we’ll resume with a daily service to Edinburgh from June 1, 2019, the spokesperson said via an emailed statement.
Emirates in May announced it will start a daily service between Dubai and the Scottish capital, marking it the second destination in Scotland after Glasgow. The carrier said the added capacity to Scotland was to meet growing demand, and described Edinburgh as a very popular leisure and business destination.
The latest announcement comes just weeks after Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways said it will suspend all flights to Edinburgh from October 1 this year as part of an ongoing review of its operations. Etihad said at the time that this was one of “several adjustments that we are making to our network in 2018 in order to improve system profitability.”
For Edinburgh, the reduction of frequencies from Emirates is the second blow during the week as Norwegian Air had earlier said it is suspending some routes that include Belfast and the Scottish capital. Norwegian blamed the suspension of services to Edinburgh on the Scottish government’s failure to cut taxes.
