Dubai route cancelled as of March ‘19

As announced on twitter yesterday Dubai route cancelled as of March ‘19

Shame. But with - what - 15 or so flights a day from airports all over Britain, Emirates were always going to win that battle.

It was just a matter of time and the route was probably only being propped up by VH bookings, otherwise it would have gone ages ago.

BA will probably be ok as there’ll always be a significant minority of passengers who refuse to fly EK. But the UK-DXB market is basically saturated.

[Darren Wheeler]

Given how many times Emirates to Dubai each day from the UK, I’m surprised it’s taken this long.

I wonder what will fill the slot, or will it be leased out?

What a shame, but as others have remarked it's a saturated route.

I wonder if the new LAS service from LHR starting March 19 is taking this slot

[Darren Wheeler]

I wonder if the new LAS service from LHR starting March 19 is taking this slot

I think it's taking one of the LAX slots. Taking the 400 slot would mean landing into LAS at around midnight.

No Surprise with even BHX getting 2 x EK A380's a day

Damn - this is the first route cut I'm disappointed with as I've patronised it several times. Every cabin crew member I've spoken to about DXB has said they could really use a second daily as it's always busy. I can only assume that with the competition and consistently low prices compared to other routes that it is just not bringing in the yield that VS are after, but who knows I guess.

Maybe I'll try to squeeze in one more trip to my favourite RAK resort before the route goes bye bye.

[Bazz]

"This year we’ve announced exciting growth plans for Manchester and London Heathrow – introducing new flights to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and boosting capacity to create more opportunities for people to fly with us. As part of this network review we made the difficult decision to withdraw Dubai and we’d like to thank our customers and dedicated team in the UAE for their loyalty over the last 12 years. We’ll continue to offer daily flights between London Heathrow and Dubai until 31 March 2019, with our last departure from London on 30 March, and we will be sad to say goodbye to this fantastic city."

Unsurprising but still disappointing.

Thanks to the 16 return trips of tier points this route got me!

[honey lamb]

I've flown this route 3 times on VS, the first shortly after it was inaugurated and each time I have enjoyed it. I don't know what it was about the route, or maybe it was the ease of transit out of DXB at the time but it was just a nice route - and also a good one for a TP run in the past! On one of the return flights they were begging for volunteers and the jump seats were fully occupied.

Since then I have flown DUB-DXB with Emirates, once in J and once in Y, each time connecting to Durban. I'm not entirely enamoured of the Emirates product but having said that, they were superb in re-routing me via LHR to Cork even though they don't haven't a presence in Cork due to a delay on the return flight to Durban and their kindness to me and my niece when we were travelling to DXB en route to Durban following the death of her mother was second to none.

[preiffer]

...only a (short) matter of time now before Delta Atlantic (sorry, Virgin) only fly west out of London?

Sad news, two flights planned on this route before she goes. It's probably goodbye from me to VS due to the huge route network of EK. Shame, I liked the cheeky British personality!

...only a (short) matter of time now before Delta Atlantic (sorry, Virgin) only fly west out of London?

I really hare to say it but I have the same feeling.
A year ago I half expected HKG to go the same way but since they re-establushed the LHR-HKG-SYD the route seems energised.

for me, yet another reason to not collect miles. For the last few years these were easy UC Gs . Looks like BA/EK from now on.

Phew, we were lucky to get our G back from DXB on 28th then.

Sad to see but not surprising unfortunately. Last September we went and the economy Emirates prices were not far off the Virgin economy award taxes and fees. Can’t compete with the volume of Emirates never mind other carriers to Dubai and Abu.

Emirates economy is a good product IMO, especially the rear seats of 2 for a couple.

Suspected the cards may be written for DXB when the £289 deals started appearing. Just not sustainable. I presume the second Johannesburg will take its slot certainly leaving LHR?

[mitchja]

presume the second Johannesburg will take its slot certainly leaving LHR?

I thought the new extra BOS flights where taking the DXB slots? Both services end/start on the same day.

I think the remaining eastbound routes still have some merit. As others have said HKG can now connect folks to Australia so I can't see that getting canned soon, despite signs over the last few years. Same with Shanghai, it's a popular stopover point on the way to New Zealand. Lagos is apparently the most profitable route of the whole network. Delhi I don't really know enough about to comment on but there's a big codeshare network with Jet that continues to expand - so that would be a daft one to get rid of. JNB has the new second daily so that's a blessing for it.

We'll see though.

[mitchja]

One thing people often forget about is cargo. I believe most, if not all the current east-bound VS flights do well for cargo. It’s not just about passenger loads.