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Qantas and Emirates extend partnership

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Qantas and Emirates will apply to extend their landmark partnership for another five years, making changes to reflect customer demand, new aircraft technology and each airline’s respective network strengths.

Since 2013, eight million passengers have travelled more than 65 billion kilometres on the combined network, and now they will be served with increased customer choice and frequent flyer earn and redeem opportunities.

The key change will see the airlines better leveraging each other’s networks, by providing three options to Australia from Europe – via Dubai and Singapore, and direct to Perth.

Qantas will re-route its daily London – Sydney A380 service via Singapore rather than Dubai and upgrade its existing daily Singapore-Melbourne flight from an A330 to an A380.  As previously announced, Qantas’ existing London-Dubai-Melbourne service will be replaced with its direct Dreamliner service flying London-Perth-Melbourne.

Emirates will continue to operate 77 weekly services from Dubai to five cities – Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney – including seven daily A380 flights.

Qantas group CEO Alan Joyce said the changes represented an evolution of the partnership to deliver additional benefits for customers, including the millions of frequent flyer members of both airlines, “The first five years of the Qantas-Emirates alliance has been a great success. Emirates has given Qantas customers an unbeatable network into Europe that is still growing. We want to keep leveraging this strength and offer additional travel options on Qantas, particularly through Asia.  Improvements in aircraft technology means the Qantas network will eventually feature a handful of direct routes between Europe and Australia, but this will never overtake the sheer number of destinations served by Emirates and that’s why Dubai will remain an important hub for our customers.”

Sir Tim Clark, president Emirates Airline, said, “Emirates has worked with Qantas on these network changes. We see an opportunity to offer customers an even stronger product proposition for travel to Dubai, and onward connectivity to our extensive network in Europe, Middle East and Africa. The airlines will shortly seek re-authorisation from relevant regulators, including the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, to continue coordination of pricing, schedules, sales and tourism marketing, under an expanded partnership.

The successful Qantas and Emirates partnership has raked in robust operational numbers over the years, and it is these results that give the partnership even stronger chance of success going forward.

Since 2013, frequent flyer members of both airlines have earned and used points flying on more than five million flights, travelling over 47 billion kilometres on the joint network. On average more than 10,000 Emirates passengers have travelled on Qantas’ domestic and regional services within Australia each month, increasing to 20,000 during peak periods.

The partnership gives travellers wide access to routes across all continents, customers can access over 2,000 routes over the joint network. For Emirates’ customers, the partnership opens up access to over 60 Australian destinations that Emirates does not serve, and for Qantas’ customers, it gives access to over 40 cities in Europe, the Middle East and North America, not served by Qantas. Qantas and Emirates extend partnership.

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