Emirates to add more capacity in Australia

While Qantas continues to question the capacity been thrown at Australia by Middle East airlines, Emirates is not holding back on its growth plans.

EK will add a tenth daily flight to Australia in October, increasing the number of weekly seats offered Down Under from 22,000 to 25,000 in each direction.

Copenhagen will become EK's 27th European destination when it launches August 1.

"When we open a new destination in Europe, we need to add capacity in places such as the Far East and Africa to balance the network," explained Divisional SVP-Commercial Operations Worldwide Richard Vaughan.

The Dubai-based carrier plans to take delivery of 14 new aircraft in its upcoming fiscal year beginning April 1, and retain four others it had planned to remove, owing to strong traffic demand.

The carrier operates 15 Airbus A380s, a number that will grow dramatically as deliveries ramp up.

Vaughan told Air Transport World in Dubai, "We [will] start constant delivery of the remaining 75 A380s from September 2011."

He said the A380s are still a kind of marketing tool and that passengers will change their schedules to be able to fly on the aircraft.

Emirates carried 27.5 million passengers in the 2009-10 fiscal year, 60 percent of them changing aircraft in Dubai.