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Generally speaking, a 5th Freedom route is an airline route flown between two countries by an airline that isn’t domiciled in either country.
Emirates operates around thirty 5th Freedom Routes around the globe with the better known ones including Milan – New York, Athens – New York and Bangkok – Hong Kong. Now the airline has announced that it will start up another 5th Freedom route in Asia.
As things stand Emirates operates 5 daily flights between Dubai and Bangkok during the northern hemisphere summer and, from 1 June 2019, the 777 that currently operates the third flight on this route will not be terminating its outbound journey in Bangkok – it will go on to Phnom Penh in Cambodia.
Here’s what the schedule will look like:
EK370 DXB 08:45 – 18:15 BKK 20:00 – 21:25 PNH
EK371 PNH 23:20 – 00:40+1 day BKK 02:25 – 05:35 DXB
Emirates currently operates another 5th Freedom route to Phnom Penh out of Yangon in Myanmar but the airline hasn’t mentioned if this route is being discontinued or if the new flight from Bangkok is being brought in to supplement the existing service – I suspect that the service from Yangon will be suspended.
Assuming Emirates continues to operate the same 777-300ER as is currently scheduled (it may not) the aircraft will offer the following cabins:
- 8 First Class seats
- 42 Business Class seats
- 310 Economy Class seats
With the journey between Bangkok and Phnom Penh barely being an hour long this will be one of the shortest routes on which Emirates will offer a First Class cabin – it will be interesting to see how many miles will be needed to redeem a First Class award for such a short flight.
Featured image courtesy of Emirates
