Emirates has marked 30 years of operations in the UK by announcing that it is on track to carry five million passengers between the UK and Dubai in the 2017/18 financial year, making it a record year for the airline.
This is an increase on the 2016/17 total for the growing airline, which saw 4.92 million passengers fly between the UK and Dubai.
Emirates launched its first flight to Gatwick on July 6, 1987 and carried 87,000 passengers in its first year of UK operations.
Since then Emirates has added services to a further five UK gateways; Manchester in 1990; Heathrow in 1991; Birmingham in 2000; Glasgow in 2004 and Newcastle in 2007.
Emirates’ codeshare agreement with Flybe enables passengers to seamlessly connect to cities such as Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Jersey and Newquay.
All codeshare flights operated by Flybe connect with Emirates flights from Dubai to Manchester, Glasgow and Birmingham.
Emirates employs 3,543 people from the UK including 1,892 cabin crew and 622 flight deck crew.
