Today marked an important return to Auckland’s International Airport. After almost 3 years of absence the Emirates’ A380 has returned to the busiest airport in New Zealand. Let’s take a closer look at what it’s all about and the EK flight operations for this flight.
The Return of The Emirates A380 to Auckland
In preparation to the busy summer and Christmas holidays in Australia and New Zealand Emirates is powering up it’s operations to the 2 countries.
In particular for New Zealand this will be the first summer season without any covid restrictions in place. Meaning that travellers will be able to move freely from and to the country.
To accomodate the soon to come rise in travel request Emirates returned to New Zealand with its largest airliner the Airbus A380. The aircraft type will operate flight EK448.
This is a special flight, as stated by the airline, so it’ll probably operate through summer 2022 and cease operations as the hot season comes to an end.
EK448’s Schedule
The flight currently has a daily frequency with the following schedule:
- EK448 takes off from Dubai (DXB) at 10:20AM and lands in Auckland (AKL) at 11:20AM the next morning
- EK449 the return flight takes off from Auckland (AKL) at 21:15 and lands in Dubai (DXB) at 05:25AM the next morning
The landing time of the return flight into Dubai is carefully chosen to feed passengers onto connecting flights. Little after the arrival of flight EK449 into DXB all the European and African flights depart.
The Longest Flight in EK’s Network
The route between Dubai and Auckland is now the longest connection present in Emirates’ commercial operations. The distance the A380s will have to cover on on this flight is just around 14,200Km.
That translates to an estimated 16 hours of flying time on the route from Dubai to Auckland and a staggering 17 hours 15 minutes on the reverse route. The return flight having to face with headwinds.
Pre-pandemic the Auckland was served via Brisbane or Sydney, however for now this isn’t the case. We’ll see if this stopover flight will resume in 2023.
