Emirates, which recently took delivery of its Airbus A350 aircraft, has started deploying it on flights to Mumbai and Ahmedabad starting January 26, 2025. This comes after multiple changes to its deployment start date, largely due to changes in its delivery schedule from Airbus. Currently, Emirates deploys its A350 to five destinations in the airline’s network. A6-EXD operated the inaugural, shows data from flight tracking websites.
Emirates’ A350 services to both Mumbai and Ahmedabad will operate daily as follows (all times are local). Mumbai: The A350 will operate daily on EK502 and EK503. EK502 departs Dubai at 1315hrs, arriving in Mumbai at 1750hrs. The return flight, EK503 leaves Mumbai at 1920hrs, arriving in Dubai at 2105hrs. Ahmedabad: The A350 aircraft will operate the route daily on EK538 and EK539. EK538 will depart Dubai at 2250hrs, arriving in Ahmedabad at 0255hrs (next day). EK539 will depart Ahmedabad at 0425hrs to arrive back in Dubai at 0615hrs.
Want to learn how airline network planning works? Click to know more and attend a 2.5 hour session.
Edinburgh, Kuwait and Bahrain are the other points in the Emirates network which currently see the A350 being deployed. Emirates currently serves nine points in India with 167 flights per week.
Thirteenth airline to offer the A350 services from India
Emirates becomes the thirteenth airline to operate the Airbus A350 to/from India, including Air India which now deploys all its six A350s on international routes which include flights to New York, Newark, London. The operators include Virgin Atlantic and British Airways which deploy the A350-1000 to London Heathrow from Delhi and Mumbai, Qatar Airways which operates both A350-1000 and A350-900 to Doha from Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kochi and Kolkata, Etihad which operates the A350-1000 to Abu Dhabi from Delhi and Mumbai. There are eight operators including Air India which deploy the A350-900, with Emirates to be added to this list starting today.
The other services and airlines deploying the A350-900 are Vietnam Airlines to Delhi from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Thai Airways to Bangkok from Delhi and Bengaluru, Aeroflot to Moscow from Goa-Mopa and Delhi, Singapore AIrlines to Singapore from Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad, Lufthansa to Munich from Mumbai and Bengaluru, Air France to Paris from Mumbai and Bengaluru, Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong from Chennai, Delhi and Bengaluru and now Emirates to Dubai from Mumbai and Ahmedabad. This is apart from Air India.
Shortest international flight on the A350 from India
The Ahmedabad – Dubai flight will be the shortest international flight with the A350 from India. The distance stands at 1100 miles. It is shorter than the other flights to the Middle east by Etihad or Qatar since they operate the A350s to Mumbai and Delhi, with Mumbai being slightly longer than Ahmedabad – Dubai.
Air India, on the other hand, operates the longest A350 flight out of India with the 7323 miles long flight to Newark from Delhi. The Delhi – New York route is slightly shorter at 7317 miles.
Tail Note
Emirates A350 will replace its B77L (B777-200LR) on both the flights. This will be a significant improvement in the hard product on offer. A look at the fares shows that Emirates has been pushing up its yields post COVID and without increase in bilateral rights and competition from all other carriers, is focusing on the higher yielding traffic rather than volumes. As the airline gets ready for competition from Air India, and even if the bilateral rights increase, they would be limited resulting in the airline building a premium traffic rather than focusing on the mass market, which it would be happy to let go in interest of better financial performance.
The Emirates A350 for now will have 312 seats comprising 32 business, 21 premium economy and 259 economy class seats. Rival Etihad does not operate the A350-900, but operates the larger A350-1000 instead. Qatar Airways operates both the types and its A350-900s are configured with 36 Business and 247 economy class, a total of 283 seats. Air India’s A350-900 has 28 Business class seats, 24 premium economy and 264 economy class seats.
Found this article informative? Think of supporting Network Thoughts with Power of 10
Running this website incurs some cost, along with the data sourced for analytics. If you have liked this article, consider paying INR 10 via UPI. The site will continue to be free. This will help with the maintenance, upkeep and funding the research. You can also pay via Debit or Credit card by clicking on this link.
You can support Network Thoughts by ordering Network Thoughts baggage tags !
Follow NetworkThoughts on X (Formerly Twitter), Bsky, Facebook, Telegram and YouTube.