Emirates comes to Cape Town

Front row - Ghaith Al Ghaith, Emirates’ Executive Vice President, Commercial Operations Worldwide and Adnan Kazim, Emirates' Senior Vice President, Commercial Operations Africa. Back row: Anja Meadon, Emirates' Sales Manager and Fouad Caunhye, Emirates' Regional Manager South Africa.

The airline will begin operating daily flights between Cape Town International Airport, the continent's third-busiest, and the ultra-modern Dubai International Airport on March 30.

A senior Emirates delegation led by Ghaith Al Ghaith, Emirates' Executive Vice President, Commercial Operations Worldwide, is currently in the city to introduce the airline's award-winning product and service to media and over 1000 travel and cargo agents. The road show features a multi-media presentation about Dubai and Emirates as well as a viewing gallery.

The airline's road show comes hot on the heels of the Emirates-sponsored Africa Open golf tournament, underlying the airline's increasing South African focus.

Ramping up excitement ahead of the start of operations, the airline has unveiled special fares from Cape Town to a host of destinations in its increasingly global footprint. From March 30 to May 31, 2008, business and leisure travellers can visit Dubai for R3490; Europe and India for R3990; the Far East for R4990, Perth for R5990; other Australian gateways for R6990, and USA and Canada for R6490.

Al Ghaith noted: “Cape Town is one of the world's most beautiful cities and is a regular feature in the holiday calendars of Middle Eastern and European tourists. The city's natural setting, world-famous landmarks, diverse entertainment facilities, and strong tourism infrastructure have enhanced its popularity, particularly among UAE holidaymakers, resulting in a 4% increase in arrivals in 2006.”

“Business tourism too is a vital growth sector, often contributing more foreign spend per tourist than leisure tourism. Leveraging our strong network of operations in Europe, Middle East and Australasia, we will support the South African government's efforts in boosting business and tourism inflows into the country.”

He added: “We have already started promoting Cape Town through our offices in 62 countries in the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, and Asia Pacific. These efforts complement Emirates Holidays' existing initiatives to promote Cape Town through its World of Choice brochure.”

Emirates will operate its Boeing 777-200 on the route. It is one of the largest aircraft in its fleet, in a three-class configuration of 12 First, 42 Business, and 236 Economy class seats. First-class seats are equipped with an Integrated Passenger Seat Controller enabling all seat and in-flight entertainment options to be accessed at the touch of a button. These include the airline's in-flight entertainment system, ‘ice' (information, communications, entertainment), which offers over 600 channels of movies, TV entertainment, audio and games.

Business-class seats can be adjusted from fully upright to deeply reclined positions. Backrest, lumbar support, leg rest, and an adjustable winged head rest maximise passenger comfort. The comfortably contoured Economy class seats allow passengers to stretch out and relax.

The flights will introduce over 2000 seats and over 100 tons of cargo capacity per week per direction to Cape Town, a development that will be welcomed by business and leisure travellers on either sides of the equator.

EK 771 will take off daily from Cape Town International Airport at 18:10 hours, touching down at Dubai International Airport at 05:40 hours the following day. Inbound flight EK 770 will depart Dubai at 08:35 hours, arriving in Cape Town at 16:25 hours.

The airline currently flies to a number of other African destinations – Abidjan, Accra, Addis Ababa, Alexandria, Cairo, Casablanca, Dar es Salaam, Entebbe, Johannesburg, Khartoum, Lagos, Nairobi, Tripoli and Tunis.