Competition heats up on Mumbai-Dubai route as Jet, flydubai to add flights

Emirates says competition is healthy, sees no impact on its business

Competition has intensified on the busy Mumbai-Dubai route with Jet Airways and flydubai adding flights from October end. While Jet Airways is adding its fifth daily flight on the route flydubai is launching its service to Mumbai.

Emirates is the market leader on the route and flies 5 daily flights between the two cities. Totally Emirates flies 185 flights per week to ten Indian destinations. Earlier in March India and Dubai revised the bilateral pact allowing airlines to 11,000 additional seats between India and Dubai in a phased manner. Emirates also launched its Airbus A380 service between Dubai-Mumbai following the revision of the pact.

"The Airbus A380 is our flagship product and it is here to stay. We have carried out lot of innovations in product and we have got very good loads for the A380 flight. We look at competition positively. It is healthy. It will also offer more choices to consumers,'' said Emirates's India vice president Essa Sulaiman Ahmad.

Currently airlines from Dubai are utilising over 3700 of the additional seats which were allotted in March. Ahmad said the airline had made an application to the Dubai government for allocation of additional seats for winter schedule but refused to divulge whether the airline was planning additional flights or deploying larger capacity aircraft.