Why Emirates is upgrading to the A380 for daily service at D/FW Airport

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An Airbus A380 in flight.

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Nicholas Sakelaris

Staff Writer- Dallas Business Journal

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Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport will join an exclusive club as the Emirates Airbus A380 takes off toward Dubai at 12:35 p.m. Oct. 1.

Already the world’s third busiest airport in terms of operations, it will be one of 29 airports worldwide that Emirates serves with the A380 and the third U.S. destination with the others being New York City and Los Angeles.

The 489-seat, two-story aircraft will make the 15-hour flight daily, replacing the 266-seat Boeing 777 aircraft Emirates has been using since it started flying out of D/FW Airport in February 2012. That’s an increase of 83 percent.

Thursday morning I sat down with Hubert Frach, divisional senior vice president for Emirates about the demand to fly between Texas and Dubai and the luxuries that set the A380 apart from other passenger planes.

“Everything’s bigger in Texas so we thought we’d bring the biggest passenger aircraft in the world here,” Frach said as we talked in the lobby of the W Hotel in Uptown Dallas. “The load factors are really high. You can assume the load factors are close to 90 percent.”

Much of the demand comes from Fortune 500 companies that have a regional headquarters in Dubai, Frach said.

“Dallas is certainly a business travel hub and also Dubai is a business travel hub,” he said.

The energy boom has also generates demand for travel from Texas to the United Arab Emirates and other Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia.

“The route network of Emirates is certainly also developed according to those needs,” Frach said. “We go to oil and energy destinations.”

Flights from Dallas to Dubai will be among the longest that Emirates flies, second to Los Angeles. That’s a big reason why Emirates takes luxuries and amenities to another level with the A380.

Nicholas covers the energy, manufacturing, aviation and transportation beats for the Dallas Business Journal. Subscribe the Energy Inc. newsletter