Emirates has been talking about its planned Airbus A380 and Boeing 777-300ER cabin refit programme for some time. Well, it seems the first aircraft has now entered the hangar for the work.
The programme is planned to last two years, encompassing 120 aircraft.
The first refit
After completing flight EK928 from Cairo to Dubai on Monday, A6-EVM was steered to Hanger E at the Emirates Engineering Centre where a team of specialised engineers began preparing the aircraft for its makeover.
In addition to recruiting 190 additional staff for the project, Emirates is also engaged with 62 key partners and suppliers who have hired hundreds more skilled hands.
After months of planning and testing, engineers took stock and requested 2,200 part numbers. In turn, Emirates’ procurement team raised 12,600 purchase orders for the initial phase of the programme. At the Emirates Engineering Centre, purpose-built workshops have been set up and stocked with parts and equipment for the project.
The process will take 16 days in total, with crews working around the clock to take apart the entire cabin interior of the A380 and put it back together again in a carefully planned and tested sequence. During this process, thousands of parts will be removed, replaced, or receive a facelift. Even Emirates’ famous Shower Spa will feature new colour tones with a hand-stencilled motif of a Ghaf tree, along with the installation of a Premium Economy Cabin.
Trained teams will implement a consistent process for every aircraft – a team of engineers will first remove the window seats in Economy class, freeing up space for another team to remove the side panels of the cabin interiors. These panels will go straight to one of three purpose-built workshops to be laminated with Emirates’ latest colour tones.
To make room for the 56 Premium Economy class seats, 88 Economy seats at the front of the main deck will be removed.
On the upper deck, Business and First Class seats will be dismantled and loaded onto a modified catering truck to lower them to the ground where other vehicles will shuttle them to bespoke workshops. Business Class seats will be repainted and re-upholstered with new leather at Emirates Engineering, while First Class seats will be sent to a specialist at Dubai World Central (DWC) for refurbishing.
All carpets and floorings throughout the aircraft cabins will be replaced before the refurbished seats are re-installed.
Speeding through to the second aircraft and beyond
The second aircraft scheduled for a makeover, A6-EUW, will roll into Emirates Engineering Centre on 01 December.
As the programme goes into full swing, engineers will work simultaneously on two aircraft. This means, every eight days, one aircraft will be grounded and towed to Emirates Engineering for retrofitting.
By 23 May 2024, all 67 A380s earmarked for the retrofit programme will be back in service and Emirates will then begin work on 53 of its Boeing 777s. By March 2025, all 120 retrofitted aircraft will be back in service.
Onward Deployment
The airline has announced plans to introduce Premium Economy service on its routes to New York JFK, San Francisco, Melbourne, Auckland and Singapore, by the end March 2023.
As more aircraft are refitted, the Premium Economy product will be rolled out on further routes.
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EK and SQ have always been my favorite airlines. I always fly F or business. They are like diamonds in the sky.
I cannot wait to fly either one of the two carriers