Emirates Revamps Flight Schedule in and Out of South Africa!

Thursday 9th of September 2021

Emirates has announced the airline’s largest weekly schedule to South Africa since the start of the pandemic: an expansion of its operations in and out of South Africa, boosting its schedule to 28 weekly flights by October, aiming to bring more competitive choices for customers wishing to visit Dubai, and through Dubai to the airline’s network of over 120 global destinations.

The newly revamped schedule includes double daily flights to Johannesburg, including the introduction of Emirates’ iconic A380 on one of the daily flights, in addition to daily services to both Cape Town and Durban. The new frequencies and capacity increase across all of the airline’s gateways in South Africa are effective from 31 October 2021.

Emirates’ flight schedule expansion comes in response to a surge in customer demand to Dubai as tourist visas have opened up for all nationalities, in addition to the easing of restrictions across some destinations that now allow quarantine-free entry for South Africans. Emirates is also firmly committed to supporting the recovery of South Africa’s tourism industry through facilitating enhanced connectivity for international visitors into the country.

Emirates is set to revive its strategic partnership and cooperation with the country’s flag carrier. Prior to the pandemic, the partnership developed to include a complementary joint network of 110 destinations, optimized schedules offering greater connectivity for customers, as well as baggage transfers and enhanced reciprocal frequent flyer benefits. Since the start of their strategic cooperation, close to 370,000 passengers have benefitted from the Emirates and SAA partnership. With customer convenience top of mind, plans are underway to expand the ability to book connecting flights on both carriers within one itinerary once again.

With the revival of the SAA partnership, Emirates is strengthening its footprint across South and southern Africa to four interline and codeshare partnerships, including Airlink, Cemair and FlySafair, boosting the airline’s route map with 79 additional codeshare and interline cities, offering its customers more flights, greater access to regional destinations, and a better experience when traveling.