Emirates is planning to broaden its Italian network, with growth across the country.
Emirates Boeing 777-300ER at Hamburg Airport – Image, Economy Class and Beyond
The airline has confirmed the following route changes:
- Dubai and Venice will resume from 1st July, initially offering 3 flights a week
- Dubai and Milan will increase from 8 to 10 weekly flights in July. This will be made up of a daily service on the Dubai-Milan-New York JFK route and a three-times-weekly return flights between Dubai and Milan.
Emirates currently serve 5 weekly flights to Rome and 3 weekly flights to Bologna
The new routes and service boosts will increase operations to Italy to four cities, with 21 flight a week.
They will utilise the Boeing 777-300ER on all of these routes.
Emirates’ expansion of flight services in Italy follows the start of “Covid-Tested flight” arrangements, which allow its passengers to travel to Italy without quarantine on arrival. Effective 2 June, Emirates customers travelling to Italy aged 2 years and above, are required to hold a negative COVID-19 PCR-RT or Rapid Antigen test result valid for 48 hours before departure. Travellers must also take a Rapid Antigen swab test on arrival in Italy, at their own cost. For more details on entry requirements to Italy, customers can check the travel requirements page on emirates.com.
In Quotes
Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Emirates Chairman and Chief Executive said:
“We welcome the Covid-Tested flight arrangements and would like to thank the Italian and UAE authorities for their ongoing efforts to ease and facilitate international travel. The UAE has a strong and longstanding relationship with Italy and the safe return of air connectivity will help boost mutual trade and tourism. As a global commercial hub, and home to people from more than 200 nations, Dubai and the UAE have spared no effort to keep communities safe from the pandemic – from our world-leading vaccination programme to our bio-safety protocols across all sectors including recreation and entertainment facilities, to schools, businesses and airports. We hope that more countries will consider similar arrangements to facilitate quarantine-free travel.”
Deploying capacity on tested flights
Italy’s method of COVID-Free entry is an interesting one – and it’s bearing fruit with both the USA and Dubai now deploying capacity en-mass to the country, to boost tourism, business travel and allowing families to reconnect.
How safe the testing procedures – as well as the return procedures are – is another matter (no doubt, there will be a need for a test before returning to the country of origin, as well as any quarantine requirement that will need to be met).
It’ll be interesting to see if other bilateral arrangements turn up to drive the Italian summer.
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