Emirates Deputy President and Chief Commercial Officer, Adnan Kazim said the carrier plans to make a grand return to Nigeria after two years of exiting the route which was popular with Nigerian travellers.
Speaking to journalists yesterday at the 80th Annual General Meeting (AGM) and World Air Transport Summit which ended on Tuesday in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), he said the airline plans to be linking back in the area of starting Dubai-Lagos daily from October, adding that this is something that they have been looking forward to.
He further stated that the carrier won’t have much problem retaining its market share because of a lot of history behind its operations.
“We are excited to resume our services to Nigeria. The Lagos-Dubai service has traditionally been popular with customers in Nigeria and we hope to reconnect leisure and business travellers to Dubai and onwards to our network of over 140 destinations. We thank the Nigerian government for their partnership and support in re-establishing this route and we look forward to welcoming passengers back onboard.”
He said, “We are not new to the market. I am sure we are opening up new options, opportunities and new gateways for passengers to travel to Dubai and it is very important for Nigerians and even Emirates which is quite important by complimenting each other and having a way forward.”
Reminded that Emirates had been away for a very long time and may find it difficult to come back strongly, he said, “Emirates is a well-known brand and name. We are coming in to bring in the value around and the network that Emirates has which are over 140 destinations. We are coming in with the brand and the quality that we sell. Onboard, we are coming in and having in Dubai which is quite an important hub, offering seamless connectivity to the passengers.”
“We have many loyal customers around our Skyworld members; they are waiting for that moment to happen. We are bringing in the value that the market is expected to get and we believe that with all these that I mentioned being closer to the consumer is something that definitely will be our task and we are confident that we will be regaining our position in short a matter of time.”
He reiterated that for the carrier, they always need to look at more capacity entering into any market, which will balance back and kind of having that back by having many carriers operating on a route.
“Emirates has been there; definitely, we will bring capacity to the market. As far as the fare is concerned, it is a question of demand and supply and new fares will pop up. I cannot give details around this topic but one thing that I am sure of is that always newcomers, new capacities coming to the market are good for the consumer as far as that is concerned.”
He hinted that Emirates would deploy 360 seater B777-300ER aircraft on the Dubai-Lagos route with three with business, first class and economy classes.
With the resumption of operations to Nigeria, Emirates operates to 19 gateways in Africa with 157 flights per week from Dubai, with further reach to an additional 130 regional points in Africa through its codeshare and interline partnerships with South African Airways, Airlink, Royal Air Maroc, Tunis Air, among others.
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