Emirates says it has no interest in SYD to LAX

Emirates Airlines says that while it hopes to continue to boost its presence in Australia, providing flights from Sydney to Los Angeles is off its radar.

Emirates President Tim Clark told ABC television on Sunday that Emirates intended to boost its local market share from a current 8% or 9% to 15% to 16% and to achieve this, Emirates has asked the Australian government to let it increase its number of flights in and out of Australia from the current cap of 49 a week, with the request drawing a strong reaction from Qantas.

Mr Clark says that he doesn’t know what all the fuss is about, because Emirates flies mostly from destinations in the Middle East, Africa and Europe that Qantas doesn’t serve, adding, “Our UK presence is running about 8% or 9% of the total that we bring in so that could hardly be a threat.”

Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon has also expressed his displeasure at the prospect of Emirates offering flights from Sydney to Los Angeles, but Mr Clark says the response is misguided,  “We just don’t go there, we want Australia, this our primary market and I’m telling him (Mr Dixon) that we have not made an application to go trans-Pacific from any point in Australia.”

He added, that if the government turns down Emirate’s request for more local flights, Emirates would consider flying to other places in Australia outside the four major ports, saying, “We’ve assessed Adelaide, we’ve looked at Darwin, we’ve looked a large number of other points.”

Mr Clark confirmed that the much publicised delay in production until August 2008 of Airbus’s A380 aircraft, of which Emirates was supposed to receive eighteen, will slow the airline’s ability to provide extra capacity in Australia, saying, “Our capacity restrictions as a result of the A380 saga over the last few weeks has caused us to rethink what we do and how soon we do it, but Australia remains very high on our strategic production capacity allocation so we want to do more here.”

In addition, Mr Clark also announced yesterday that the airline might lease up to seven Boeing aircraft as a result of the Airbus A380 delays seriously impacting on their ability to compete in the global market.

Emirates will not receive its first A380 until August 2008 and as a result might lease between five and seven Boeing 777-300 ERs in the next few days for delivery in the second half of 2008, at the same time clarifying that the airlines A380 order remains intact despite the recently announced delays.

Report by The Mole