Emirates begins direct flights between Dubai, Abuja

Emirates, a global connector of people and places, has now connected Abuja, the Nigerian capital, to its worldwide network. Abuja is Emirates’ 26th destination in Africa and its 144th worldwide.

Emirates flight EK785 landed at Abuja’s Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport today, 1st August, marking the start of the airline’s daily service to its second destination in Nigeria. Services to Lagos were launched just over 10 years ago.

“This new daily flight provides a convenient point-to-point service for our customers between Abuja and Dubai, and it will meet and further stimulate a vibrant market demand between the two cities. It will also serve our customers in Nigeria and around the network with additional connectivity and daily frequency.

“Our leisure and business passengers from Nigeria can now better connect to the Middle East, Europe, the United States and Asia via our hub in Dubai. Customers in Abuja can experience our A380 flagship aircraft to 29 destinations around the world, including popular ones like Beijing, Hong Kong, Mumbai, New York, Jeddah and London.

“With a fast growing economy, Nigeria is a key market for Emirates. We started operations to Nigeria on 2nd January 2004, with four flights a week from Dubai to Lagos. Since then, our operations have steadily grown with increases in both frequency and capacity between Lagos and Dubai.

“Today, we fly twice daily to Lagos and now we have added Abuja, giving us a total of more than 12,200 seats a week, which will further stimulate business and leisure travel, as well as trade,” said Adil Al Ghaith, Emirates vice president commercial operations, Northern and Western Africa.

Emirates’ Dubai-Abuja route is served by an Airbus A340-300 which offers 267 seats in a three-class configuration – 12 First Class, 42 Business Class and 213 Economy Class seats.

According to the airline, customers on the route will experience Emirates’ award-winning hospitality – from multi-national cabin crew and gourmet cuisine to the ice entertainment system, which offers hundreds of channels of audio and visual entertainment.

Customers also enjoy Emirates’ generous baggage allowance of 30kg in Economy Class, 40kg in Business and 50kg in First.