holding back though, he said, and wanted to see how international travel worked for the next six months before travelling.
Emirates was the third biggest international airline servicing Australia before the pandemic. It carried 7 per cent of all international passengers in 2019, behind only Singapore Airlines (8 per cent), and Qantas/Jetstar (26 per cent).
The carrier has continued flying to Australia throughout the pandemic under strict passenger caps – set in line with hotel quarantine capacity, which limited some flights to fewer than a dozen people – and carried 90,000 passengers here in the past 12 months.
Emirates is flying a daily Boeing 777 service out of Sydney to its Dubai hub, and from December 1 will upgrade that to its Airbus A380 superjumbos. Mr Brown said the airline would increase its four-time weekly Melbourne-Dubai service to a daily flight, also using the 777s, from December 1 as well, responding to passenger demand to date.
Qantas is accelerating the return of its A380s in response to a stronger than expected bounce back in international travel demand, while Singapore Airlines is already operating several daily flights into Sydney and Melbourne.
Emirates is targeting a return to 70 per cent of pre-COVID levels of flying across its global network by December and a full return to pre-COVID levels by the middle of next year. But Mr Brown said Emirates’ capacity into Australia over that period would depend on when other states reopened their borders, and when the country allowed non-residents to visit again.
The global travel industry is trying to ease travelers’ fears about the complexity of complying with the different quarantine, vaccination and testing rules; and the risk of contracting COVID-19 abroad.
Mr Brown said Emirates had introduced disposable menus in its premium cabins and removed them entirely in economy class to lower transmission risk, while lavatories were now cleaned every 45 minutes during flights.
