Price war not on Emirates' flight path

By CHRIS DANIELS

Emirates, the Dubai-based airline due to start flying to Auckland next month, will not be part of any transtasman aviation price war, says one of its executives.

As Air NZ puts the finishing touches to its "express-style" service to Australia and the Pacific Islands, Emirates is targeting the luxury and business end of the market. Its first flight leaves Auckland on August 2.

Its senior vice-president of commercial operations for West Asia and the Pacific Rim, Keith Longstaff, said Emirates was not about to start any price war, or compete on price. Cheap introductory fares were a way of getting customers to try the new service.

Emirates will have its own check-in counters and staff at Auckland Airport and will fly a 380-seat Boeing 777 aircraft daily between Auckland and both Sydney and Melbourne. In late October it will start daily flights between Auckland and Brisbane.



Industry publication Travel Today yesterday reported that Emirates was likely to capture a "large chunk" of the corporate travel market.

The total of 21 flights a week will make Emirates the third biggest transtasman carrier, with about 30 per cent of the total capacity across the Tasman.

Around the same time Emirates will begin flying an Airbus A340-500 aircraft between Auckland and Sydney.

This plane can make the 14-hour flight between Sydney and Dubai nonstop.

Longstaff said flying to New Zealand made sense, partly because otherwise its aircraft would be left idle after arriving in the morning from Dubai.

Emirates believed it could make its transtasman service profitable in its own right, not just as a feeder service to its Australia-Dubai services.

The airline recently placed the largest ever aircraft order with plane manufacturers Airbus and Boeing, for 71 new planes, including 21 double-deck "superjumbo" Airbus A380s. Owned by the United Arab Emirates Government, the airline is part of a long-term plan to make Dubai a hub for trade, travel, communications and commerce in the Middle East.