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Over the past year Emirates’ scheduling team has been very active when it comes to the airline’s routes to/from the US with Emirates apparently happy to tinker with its schedule on what seems like a very frequent basis. We’ve seen Emirates reduce services to Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston and Florida and, as recently as 16 January, I noted that Emirates is no longer taking reservations for one of its JFK flights through 26 November 2018.
Now the airline is tinkering with its US routes again but this time the changes appear positive.
New Non-Stop Service To Newark
As things stand Emirates operates a single daily flight between Dubai and Newark but, as this service has a stopover in Athens along the way, it’s not a particularly efficient way of getting to Dubai for New Yorkers.
Still, if you prefer to depart New York from Newark rather than JFK, Emirates has got some good news for you.
From 1 June 2018 Emirates will be adding a second daily flight between Dubai and Newark and this one will be a non-stop service. The new flights will depart Dubai in the early hours of the morning and will get in to Newark at 9am while the return will depart Newark around midday and will arrive in Dubai shortly after 8am.
Here’s the exact schedule as currently posted by Emirates:
EK223 DXB 03:00 – 09:00 EWR
EK224 EWR 11:50 – 08:20+ 1 day DXB
This new flight will be operated by a 777-300ER aircraft offering the following cabin configuration:
- 8 First Class Suites
- 42 Business Class seats
- 306 Economy Class suites
This is bad news for anyone hoping that the new service will offer the latest Emirates First Class suites and Business Class seats. 8 suites in First Class indicates the older product will be on offer as the new suites are set out in a 1-1-1 formation with only 6 in the frontmost cabin.
The First & Business Class cabins on the new Newark flight
The good news is that this schedule update means that New York won’t be losing capacity to Dubai as it appeared it would when Emirates suspended one of its flights to/from JFK.
On top of this, everyone who prefers Newark over JFK (and that’s a rapidly growing group of people) now has a new non-stop service to Dubai they can book.
Emirates Re-Ups Service To Fort Lauderdale and Orlando
When Emirates launched its route between Dubai and Orlando in 2015 and its route to/from Fort Lauderdale in 2016 both offered daily services.
Since then, however, Emirates has cut back those services to just 5 flights per week and only occasionally increased capacity when peak season demand dictated that seats were needed.
Now, from 25 March 2018, it looks as if Emirates is ready to offer both routes as a year-round daily service again.
Fort Lauderdale Schedule**
EK213 DXB 03:00 – 10:55 FLL
EK212 FLL 20:10 – 19:40+1 day DXB
This route is operated by an Emirates 777-200LR offering 8 First Class seats, 42 Business Class seats and 216 Economy Class seats.
Emirates 777-200LR Courtesy of BriYYZ
Orlando Schedule**
EK219 DXB 02:50 – 10:25 MCO
EK220 MCO 14:05 – 12:15+1 day DXB
This route is operated by an Emirates 777-300ER offering 8 First Class seats, 42 Business Class seats and 304 Economy Class seats.
**These are timings for the summer schedule so timings during winter will be different
Bottom Line
Following significantly weaker numbers in 2017 (probably at least in part due to the constraints the US government was placing on departures from various airports in the Middle East and Africa) Emirates scaled back its offering to the US quite significantly and it was joined in that move by Etihad.
Now it looks as if Emirates has regained some (if not all) of its confidence in the US market and it’s good to see significant increases in capacity to the US for 2018…..now let’s hope things stay thing way.
