Currently, Emirates Airline operates a fleet comprising only the Airbus A380 aircraft and Boeing 777s. While Emirates wanted more A380s, in an improvised version, Airbus shut down A380 production for a lack of future orders. This forced Emirates to rethink its fleet renewal strategy. The airline intends to keep the A380 aircraft flying through the mid-2030s, but they will be retired along the way.

Emirates now has the Airbus A350-900s, the Boeing 787-9 and the Boeing 777X to form the next backbone of the Emirates fleet. In May, Emirates unveiled the curtain on their plans for the A350 aircraft, which will be received by the airline in 2024. Emirates has 65 A350-900 aircraft on order at the moment, and it refused to order the A350-1000 aircraft to the fleet at the Dubai Airshow 2023. The A350s, per Emirates, are designated for medium and long-haul operations.

The Emirates A350-900 aircraft will offer three cabin classes: 32 Business Class seats, 21 Premium Economy seats, and 259  Economy Class seats. All of these aircraft are earmarked to serve short—to medium-haul cities on the Emirates network.

Emirates postpones entry-into-service of the A350

Emirates announced the first set of destinations to be served by its A350 aircraft, with the service to be launched in September 2024. Ten new A350s were expected to join the Emirates fleet by March 31, 2025, so the airline planned to deploy its latest aircraft type to nine destinations. Emirates was to operate its first A350 to Bahrain on the EK839/840 service from September 15, 2024.

Emirates has recently removed the A350 from the schedule for several weeks, and the booking engine indicates that some of the earlier flights scheduled on the A350 have been moved to the 777s. These delays are ostensibly due to the delay in delivery of the aircraft, where schedules have slipped by over a month compared to earlier plans.

With the update, the first Emirates A350 route is scheduled for November 4, 2024, to Edinburgh (EDI) at the moment.  However, it might not be true, given that it makes sense for Emirates to fly the aircraft to destinations closer to home before putting it on these more extended missions. The following routes to feature the A350s will be to Bahrain (BAH) and Kuwait (KWI) as of November 15, 2024. I would expect a swap, although there is no announcement. It seems the Crew Familiarisation has already been factored in while the new schedules have been updated.

These changes also affect Emirates’ A350 Indian services. Instead of launching the A350 on Mumbai and Ahmedabad rotations on October 27, 2024, Emirates will launch these flights on January 1, 2025.

Here are the full details of all the routes and when they expect to receive the A350 service now:

• Dubai to Edinburgh: November 4 onwards (Unchanged)
• Dubai to Bahrain: November 15 onwards (Previously September 15, 2024)
• Dubai to Kuwait: November 15 onwards (Previously September 16, 2024)
• Dubai to Ahmedabad: January 1, 2025 onwards (Previously October 27, 2024)
• Dubai to Mumbai: Starting January 1, 2025 (Previously October 27, 2024)
• Dubai to Bologna: January 1, 2025 onwards (Previously December 1, 2024)
• Dubai to Colombo: January 2, 2025 onwards (Previously January 1, 2025)
• Dubai to Lyon: March 1, 2025 onwards (Previously December 1, 2025)
• Dubai to Muscat: March 1, 2025 onwards (Previously December 1, 2025)

Bottomline

Emirates has delayed the first commercial flight for its A350 aircraft. Earlier, the flight was scheduled to take off in September 2024. However, as per currently available information, the first commercial flight for the A350 will be in November 2024, scheduled for Edinburgh. The aircraft will sport a new business-class product developed in collaboration with Safran.

What do you expect of the new Emirates A350 aircraft?

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