Passengers traveling to Melbourne, Auckland, New York, San Francisco and Singapore will be the first to receive the airline's premium Economy Class seats. And just by the end of the year, Emirates will return 85 A380s to the skies.
According to a press statement issued by Emirates on September 1, 2022, the newly refurbished A380s will begin operating flights to New York on December 1, 2022, to Auckland — January 15, 2023. On February 1, 2023, Melbourne will be added to them, on February 15 — the second city in the US is San Francisco, and the redesigned 380 will fly to Singapore on March 1.
In addition, Emirates will update its flight schedule to Heathrow London and Sydney, Australia.
On March 26, 2023, the A380 will reach Christchurch in southern New Zealand in Premium Economy Class.
By the end of March 2023, Emirates passengers will have the opportunity to experience the premium Economy Class cabin on 42 airline destinations. Thus refurbished flagship A380 will serve about a third of its route network. By the end of 2022, the airline hopes to restore at least 75 percent of its pre-pandemic A380 routes.
Emirates explained that: “The airline is streamlining its network to meet growing demand and expanding its existing schedule to more than 400 A380 flights from Dubai, bringing capacity to 460,000 seats per week on the A380 by March 2023, including 81,000 seats in premium cabins with the highest level of comfort.
Early August 2022 Emirates has announced that it will spend more than $2 billion to modernize the passenger cabins of the A380 and Boeing 777.
systems. Beginning in November 2022, the carrier plans to replace the interior cabins of 67 Airbus A380 and 53 Boeing 777 passenger aircraft, with one aircraft departing the Emirates Engineering Center for active service every 16 days.