Emirates airline said on Wednesday it would stop using Airbus A380 double-decker aircraft to fly passengers between Dubai and New York because demand for the route had been hit by the global recession. The Dubai-based carrier said it would redeploy the two A380s it uses for two daily flights to New York onto routes between the emirate and Toronto and Bangkok, starting June 1.
"As the global economy has affected international air travel, this aircraft redeployment was based solely on a change in capacity demands in these three markets," an Emirates official said in a statement. Emirates would use Boeing 777s for the Dubai-New York route, it said, adding the A380s would fly twice daily to Bangkok and three times a week to Toronto under the revised plan.
"The A380 will allow Emirates to address some of the unmet need in Toronto while on Bangkok, the A380 will help support the Thai governments new tourism initiatives," Emirates President Tim Clark said in a separate statement.
Gulf airlines had placed billion-dollar orders for planes from Airbus and rival Boeing Co, banking on regional economic growth to boost traffic through the hub linking East Asia, Europe and Africa. The global financial crisis and slump in oil prices has drastically dimmed the prospects for growth in the Gulf region, where Dubai is suffering from a sharp real estate downturn.
Dubai is building a new airport with an ultimate passenger capacity of about 120 million people, almost 65 percent more than Atlanta International Airport, which had 90 million passengers in 2008 and is the worlds busiest passenger airport. Emirates has ordered 58 of the A380, the worlds largest passenger aircraft, of which it was due to have five of the jumbo aircraft delivered by next month. Airbus is the plane making unit of European aerospace group EAD.