Emirates getting set for transpacific connections: Clark
By:
Max Kingsley-Jones London
19 hours ago
Source:
Emirates has ambitions to introduce transpacific services from points in the Asia-Pacific, Australasia and the Americas as part of a future phase of its network development.
In an
interview with Flightglobal's Airline Business magazine, Emirates Airline president Tim Clark said that the transpacific services plan is "the only piece of the jigsaw that's missing" in the airline's development strategy.
"We're just getting into the start positions: we have the West Coast of the USA; we have Chinese points; we have Asian points; we have Australasian points. So the Pacific is encircled and the next stage is to link the dots - we have the rights."
Clark said that he recognises that the timing is not quite right yet for this phase of the airline's network development to begin: "We need to consolidate our market presence in places like the USA. We need to be as understood in the USA as we are, for example, in Europe."
Clark said that the USA is a "really difficult nut to crack" from a marketing and brand-awareness perspective, as it is not a single entity. "We'll do that through adding more destinations and getting our marketing act together."
Emirates currently serves around 114 destinations across every continent and has a passenger fleet nearing 150 aircraft. Clark said the airline is working on its plan to "globalise" its network: "This isn't a token presence in a particular city via multiple intermediate points. This is a robust presence in the points that we serve on a minimum of a daily basis and eventually two or three times a day," he said.
