Emirates adding 7th LHR Service

Arion640 · Tue Oct 24, 2017 7:49 pm

According to airline route on twitter , Ek are adding a temporary service just before and after Christmas with the 777.

Any ideas why?

Edit : 15-17 Dec and 5-8 Jan are the dates.

mikegigs · Tue Oct 24, 2017 7:52 pm

Well... not to be a smartass but, probably because it's Christmas time.

With it being the busiest travel season of the year, I'm sure there is an increased demand to/from LHR and so EK added an extra flight. Many airlines do it at this time. Some routes start and end withing a few weeks prior to and post-Christmas.

MileHFL400 · Tue Oct 24, 2017 7:54 pm

Emiratis escaping the extreme heat?

a318 · Tue Oct 24, 2017 7:55 pm

MileHFL400 wrote:
Emiratis escaping the extreme heat?

All jokes aside, the weather in the UAE is beautiful in December. It actually gets a little chilly in the evening during the "winter" season.

Arion640 · Tue Oct 24, 2017 7:56 pm

mikegigs wrote:
Well... not to be a smartass but, probably because it's Christmas time.

With it being the busiest travel season of the year, I'm sure there is an increased demand to/from LHR and so EK added an extra flight. Many airlines do it at this time. Some routes start and end withing a few weeks prior to and post-Christmas.

Sorry, I should of added.

Dates are 15-17 DEC , 5-8 JAN completley missing peak xmas.

dubaiamman243 · Tue Oct 24, 2017 7:57 pm

MileHFL400 wrote:
Emiratis escaping the extreme heat?

Extreme heat in December and January?? LOL
Max daytime temp is 20-23C and at night dips below 12C.

dubaiamman243 · Tue Oct 24, 2017 7:58 pm

My post in the Arabian Aviation thread:

Emirates will a 7th flight to London LHR on selected days during December (15 and 17) and January (5 and 7)

EK2641 15:15 - 19:15
EK2642 21:10 - 08:00+

Equipment: B777-300ER

jetskipper · Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:04 pm

How many hotel rooms a night is that for Emirates in London now?! It's would probably be advantageous to open a crew base there.

Arion640 · Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:08 pm

jetskipper wrote:
How many hotel rooms a night is that for Emirates in London now?! It's would probably be advantageous to open a crew base there.

Each A380 has at least 20 cabin crew? So 120 currently of just cabin crew + 12 pilots.

aviatorcraig · Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:10 pm

MileHFL400 wrote:
Emiratis escaping the extreme heat?

It's not that hot in London at that time of the year... :lol:

Galwayman · Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:13 pm

Peak exodus and return dates for Londoners, makes sense

vfw614 · Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:14 pm

What slots are they using? Either they have only slots for those dates for whatever reason or they would be plain stupid to have slots and only use them for those dates. LHR is the one place where you cannot show up and schedule some extra flights as you please.

b747400erf · Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:21 pm

jetskipper wrote:
How many hotel rooms a night is that for Emirates in London now?! It's would probably be advantageous to open a crew base there.

The EK that is kicking out employees from housing in Dubai to save money should open a base in London?

jetskipper · Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:24 pm

b747400erf wrote:
jetskipper wrote:
How many hotel rooms a night is that for Emirates in London now?! It's would probably be advantageous to open a crew base there.

The EK that is kicking out employees from housing in Dubai to save money should open a base in London?

I’m not sure how it works in Europe, but in the US airlines do not provide housing for cities in which the crews are domiciled. To save 132 rooms a night would be a massive savings.

behramjee · Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:40 pm

The dates of these flights are ultra peak and very high yielding. It is just an extra service for the peak winter travel period so nothing that big to talk about. In fact if EK really wanted to be aggressive and take advantage of the situation, they should have this flight between 14-23DEC and 03-10JAN.

usxguy · Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:44 pm

when you are moving 650+ people, I think that getting 14 hotel rooms is the least of your worries ^_^

Channex757 · Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:46 pm

Most likely to be extra capacity for students going home and returning for the Christmas and New Year break. Lots of them move about at that time of year.

Emirates has carried quite a good chunk of the student traffic up to now.

adamblang · Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:48 pm

Wild conjecture: Maybe a recently failed European airline's slots are being used through some bankruptcy arrangement.

sevenair · Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:49 pm

People would kill for a London base. Few people want to live in DXB. Therefore free housing, schools, healthcare, tax free salary are needed. Opening a LON would likely mean no housing allowance. Healthcare and education are already 'free' here. I reckon they'd get away with paying less too. It would certainly save on over 100 hotel rooms per night.

rutankrd · Tue Oct 24, 2017 9:10 pm

vfw614 wrote:
What slots are they using? Either they have only slots for those dates for whatever reason or they would be plain stupid to have slots and only use them for those dates. LHR is the one place where you cannot show up and schedule some extra flights as you please.

4 Radom slot pairs aren’t that difficult to find, but anyway Emirates Cargo has a few - is it two a week they could borrow if needs be and the winter slot allocation overall is slacker than summer .

Pe@rson · Wed Oct 25, 2017 2:23 am

No surprise really = higher demand = higher fares = trying to get as much of this as they can at a top period.

A non-stop LHR-DXB-LHR in the first week of December can be had from £388 with EK and slightly less with BI.

For 17th December out and 5th January back (example dates), it's a minimum of £899.

This is of course replicated across destinations. E.g.:

CPT. Early December: £793 with EK (about the same as BA's non-stop). 17th-5th: £1,700 (about the same as BA's non-stop).

BKK. Early December: £528 with EK (about the same as BR and TG's non-stop). 17th-5th: £1,115.

SYD: Early December: £745 with EK. 17th-5th: £1,700.

Bhoy · Wed Oct 25, 2017 2:40 am

Arion640 wrote:
jetskipper wrote:
How many hotel rooms a night is that for Emirates in London now?! It's would probably be advantageous to open a crew base there.

Each A380 has at least 20 cabin crew? So 120 currently of just cabin crew + 12 pilots.

Don't forget EK also have three daily A380s to LGW, so that's 180 cabin crew + 18 pilots in London.

grjplanes · Wed Oct 25, 2017 5:04 am

I think they might be adding some extra flights to various destinations around this time of year...for obvious reasons...I know there is a few extra flights to JNB and DUR loaded for December and beginning of January as well.

Cunard · Wed Oct 25, 2017 5:25 am

adamblang wrote:
Wild conjecture: Maybe a recently failed European airline's slots are being used through some bankruptcy arrangement.

Very Wild conjecture in my opinion as no recently failed European airline held slots at LHR!

directorguy · Wed Oct 25, 2017 6:58 am

If EK were to open a crew base for their London flights, wouldn't they need to find them hotel rooms at the other end (in Dubai?). Also, wouldn't they have to comply with EU/UK labour regulations, social security, pensions etc.? And finally, what about flights from the rest of the UK?
EK would need to recruit Arabic, English, French, Hindi, Urdi, Punjabi, Bengali, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog as a minimum. And they would need to ensure that speakers of all those languages are present on every single flight.

MileHFL400 · Wed Oct 25, 2017 9:34 am

sevenair wrote:
People would kill for a London base. Few people want to live in DXB. Therefore free housing, schools, healthcare, tax free salary are needed. Opening a LON would likely mean no housing allowance. Healthcare and education are already 'free' here. I reckon they'd get away with paying less too. It would certainly save on over 100 hotel rooms per night.

Tell that to the several thousands of European and American expats living in Dubai right now. As far as I can tell no one put a gun to their head and forced them to live there.

PlymSpotter · Wed Oct 25, 2017 10:50 am

sevenair wrote:
People would kill for a London base. Few people want to live in DXB. Therefore free housing, schools, healthcare, tax free salary are needed. Opening a LON would likely mean no housing allowance. Healthcare and education are already 'free' here. I reckon they'd get away with paying less too. It would certainly save on over 100 hotel rooms per night.

Well no, it would just displace the demand for hotel rooms to DXB, and this is presuming they only schedule crew on LON-DXB, which would become highly monotonous for the crew and likely result in increased staff turnover and therefore hiring costs. If you schedule them on LON-DXB-XXX-DXB-LON then you will significantly increase the number of hotel nights needed.

Samrnpage · Wed Oct 25, 2017 10:57 am

adamblang wrote:
Wild conjecture: Maybe a recently failed European airline's slots are being used through some bankruptcy arrangement.

Monarch, Air berlin didnt fly into LHR - unless you are talking about Alitalia but they will want to keep LHR

evanb · Wed Oct 25, 2017 1:05 pm

jetskipper wrote:
I’m not sure how it works in Europe, but in the US airlines do not provide housing for cities in which the crews are domiciled. To save 132 rooms a night would be a massive savings.

So instead of requiring the hotel rooms in London, they would then require them in Dubai.

readytotaxi · Wed Oct 25, 2017 1:31 pm

How about Emirates buying their own hotel and rent out excess rooms to other airlines? :stirthepot:

ThomasCook · Wed Oct 25, 2017 1:57 pm

b747400erf wrote:
jetskipper wrote:
How many hotel rooms a night is that for Emirates in London now?! It's would probably be advantageous to open a crew base there.

The EK that is kicking out employees from housing in Dubai to save money should open a base in London?

If you're going to stir, I'll finish off the story for you. Emirates is not kicking anybody out of housing. They have recently closed crew accommodation in some of the more expensive towers on Sheikh Zayed Road and those crew are now rehoused in perhaps, less desirable and convinient locations then they were previously in when they were right in the middle of the city. The live out allowance isn't actively being offering right now either meaning employees aren't being offered a choice of company accommodation or AED50k p.a and above for them to chose their own place.

ThomasCook

airbazar · Wed Oct 25, 2017 2:08 pm

jetskipper wrote:
b747400erf wrote:
jetskipper wrote:
How many hotel rooms a night is that for Emirates in London now?! It's would probably be advantageous to open a crew base there.

The EK that is kicking out employees from housing in Dubai to save money should open a base in London?

I’m not sure how it works in Europe, but in the US airlines do not provide housing for cities in which the crews are domiciled. To save 132 rooms a night would be a massive savings.

Airlines that rely on a expat workforce often provide housing or a housing subsidy as part of the total compensation package. It's very common throughout Asia.
U.S. carriers do not rely on expat/foreign crews. There are enough already residing in the U.S. and willing to take the job.

incitatus · Wed Oct 25, 2017 2:20 pm

Maybe Emirates has slack capacity and figured out a way to place into LHR for the holiday season.

JannEejit · Wed Oct 25, 2017 2:27 pm

GLA getting an extra flight in early January too.

fromheretohere9 · Wed Oct 25, 2017 2:52 pm

Slightly related but last year Qantas run special flights to STN via BKK. For ex-pats Aussies in the UK and Brits in Oz.

Arion640 · Wed Oct 25, 2017 6:28 pm

Strange how its 777 operated. I thought they'd have a little bit of slack in the A380 fleet.

Harshil9 · Wed Oct 25, 2017 6:56 pm

The dates mentioned are the weekends before and after the main xmas period. There are a few more slots available in the weekend and they mustve either made a good one off deal with LHR or as someone above suggested use Emirates Skycargo slots for those busy weekends.

Heathrow does have a bit of slack on weekends and many european airlines targeting the business market fly at a lower frequency in the weekend. Lufthansa fly 12x daily on weekdays and 10x daily on Sundays for example to LHR.

PatrickZ80 · Wed Oct 25, 2017 7:14 pm

readytotaxi wrote:
How about Emirates buying their own hotel and rent out excess rooms to other airlines?

That's more or less my idea, except for renting out excess rooms to other airlines. However, they know exactly how many people they got there so instead of putting them in hotel rooms, why not put up their own housing facility? I know a lot of airlines work this way. They don't rent hotel rooms at their destination for their crew, instead the airline owns a house that the crew being there can use. When they leave they hand over the keys to the next crew. In this case Emirates would need a whole block of houses, but I can imagine in the long term this is cheaper than renting hotel rooms.

Slash787 · Wed Oct 25, 2017 8:24 pm

My aunt is very Pro EK and she is very obsessive about EK, so I told her about this, but she refused to believe me cause according to her EK already has 10 services to LHR and 8 services to LGW, but well I din't argue with her cause according to her a brand new Mini Cooper sells for $10,000

TSA125 · Wed Oct 25, 2017 9:35 pm

Slash787 wrote:
My aunt is very Pro EK and she is very obsessive about EK, so I told her about this, but she refused to believe me cause according to her EK already has 10 services to LHR and 8 services to LGW, but well I din't argue with her cause according to her a brand new Mini Cooper sells for $10,000

That's totally relevant to this thread...

sevenair · Thu Oct 26, 2017 2:10 am

PlymSpotter wrote:
sevenair wrote:
People would kill for a London base. Few people want to live in DXB. Therefore free housing, schools, healthcare, tax free salary are needed. Opening a LON would likely mean no housing allowance. Healthcare and education are already 'free' here. I reckon they'd get away with paying less too. It would certainly save on over 100 hotel rooms per night.

Well no, it would just displace the demand for hotel rooms to DXB, and this is presuming they only schedule crew on LON-DXB, which would become highly monotonous for the crew and likely result in increased staff turnover and therefore hiring costs. If you schedule them on LON-DXB-XXX-DXB-LON then you will significantly increase the number of hotel nights needed.

Several non U.K. airlines have crews based here. There must be something in it. Paying people peoples housing PLUS hotel accommodation will likely cost more than a LON base where they'd only pay for hotel accommodation as I'd doubt they'd pay for housing or give an allowance if based in LON.

So it's hotels only vs. hotels and housing. Paying staff accommodation 365 days a year or paying only for hotel accommodation whilst on duty. I know what I'd prefer if I was trying to make a profit.

Gr8Circle · Thu Oct 26, 2017 2:31 am

MileHFL400 wrote:
Emiratis escaping the extreme heat?

Dec and Jan are the most pleasant months in the Gulf region....very pleasant and cool.....the ME is not heat all year round....

Samrnpage · Thu Oct 26, 2017 2:34 am

Maybe they are running out of room at DXB to park aircraft and the decided to mop up some of the excess demand at those peak times. I mean if you are going to shove another route out of nowhere LHR is probably one of them.

hongkongflyer · Thu Oct 26, 2017 2:50 am

evanb wrote:
jetskipper wrote:
I’m not sure how it works in Europe, but in the US airlines do not provide housing for cities in which the crews are domiciled. To save 132 rooms a night would be a massive savings.

So instead of requiring the hotel rooms in London, they would then require them in Dubai.

It should not be the issue for EK in Dubai, they probably have their facilities in Dubai at a cheaper costs,
but the EU regulations and benefits may offset the costs saved from having a London crew base.

Cunard · Thu Oct 26, 2017 5:59 am

Samrnpage wrote:
adamblang wrote:
Wild conjecture: Maybe a recently failed European airline's slots are being used through some bankruptcy arrangement.

Monarch, Air berlin didnt fly into LHR - unless you are talking about Alitalia but they will want to keep LHR

Your obviously correct about the first two airlines not serving LHR but Alitalia actually leases it's slots at LHR so they are not in a position to sell them anyway.

Cunard · Thu Oct 26, 2017 6:03 am

fromheretohere9 wrote:
Slightly related but last year Qantas run special flights to STN via BKK. For ex-pats Aussies in the UK and Brits in Oz.

Not slightly related because the special Qantas flights last year to STN from OZ via BKK on a Boeing 744 was a special charter by a religious group and had absolutely nothing to do with ex pats in the UK and OZ.

Arion640 · Thu Oct 26, 2017 6:23 am

Gr8Circle wrote:
MileHFL400 wrote:
Emiratis escaping the extreme heat?

Dec and Jan are the most pleasant months in the Gulf region....very pleasant and cool.....the ME is not heat all year round....

Or if you're looking for a good deal visit in August!

345tas · Thu Oct 26, 2017 9:12 am

fromheretohere9 wrote:
Slightly related but last year Qantas run special flights to STN via BKK. For ex-pats Aussies in the UK and Brits in Oz.

The thread on that last year says it was a single return pair chartered by the Exclusive Brethren, not an extra Christmas-time flight.

erikgrinsvall · Thu Oct 26, 2017 10:05 am

b747400erf wrote:
jetskipper wrote:
How many hotel rooms a night is that for Emirates in London now?! It's would probably be advantageous to open a crew base there.

The EK that is kicking out employees from housing in Dubai to save money should open a base in London?

What?! kicking out employees from housing??? They're freezing to opt out, but not withdrawing their allowances... People that have the allowances are entitled to this before the decision was made to freeze.
State facts bro

Anyways, irrelevant to this thread.

PlymSpotter · Thu Oct 26, 2017 11:14 am

sevenair wrote:
PlymSpotter wrote:
sevenair wrote:
People would kill for a London base. Few people want to live in DXB. Therefore free housing, schools, healthcare, tax free salary are needed. Opening a LON would likely mean no housing allowance. Healthcare and education are already 'free' here. I reckon they'd get away with paying less too. It would certainly save on over 100 hotel rooms per night.

Well no, it would just displace the demand for hotel rooms to DXB, and this is presuming they only schedule crew on LON-DXB, which would become highly monotonous for the crew and likely result in increased staff turnover and therefore hiring costs. If you schedule them on LON-DXB-XXX-DXB-LON then you will significantly increase the number of hotel nights needed.

Several non U.K. airlines have crews based here. There must be something in it. Paying people peoples housing PLUS hotel accommodation will likely cost more than a LON base where they'd only pay for hotel accommodation as I'd doubt they'd pay for housing or give an allowance if based in LON.

So it's hotels only vs. hotels and housing. Paying staff accommodation 365 days a year or paying only for hotel accommodation whilst on duty. I know what I'd prefer if I was trying to make a profit.

A handful of airlines have some crew based in the UK. IIRC the only exception in Air New Zealand who crew the LHR-LAX-LHR flights with a London base and a team of around 160. Anecdotally I know someone who used to work this route, and staff turnover is relatively high, which makes sense really - a big part of the appeal to being an FA is international travel and 'seeing' the world. Shuttling back and forth on one route isn't exactly inspiring and Emirates will understand this - staff retention is an issue already.

I disagree that the cost comparison is so simple, there are numerous other factors and costs that a UK base would incur. The fact that Emirates doesn't have a UK crew base, despite recent cost cutting exercises, indicates they don't see a benefit either.

Who is online

Popular Searches On Airliners.net