Emirates has made this announcement:

As part of its continued drive to ensure customers ‘fly better’, Emirates has selected the new Thales’ AVANT Up system for its incoming fleet of Airbus A350 aircraft, scheduled for delivery in 2024.

The airline’s investment of over US $350 million will see its 50-strong fleet of A350s equipped with next-generation inflight entertainment solutions that offer a memorable cinematic and personalised passenger experience.

The game-changing technology in Thales’ AVANT Up system features Optiq 4k QLED HDR displays – the only aircraft displays using Samsung’s QLED technology to immerse viewers in more than a billion colors. This rich display capability provides the perfect medium for Emirates’ unmatched ice inflight entertainment product which delivers over 5,000 channels of multi-language content including live TV, the latest box office movies, TV shows and music hits, and the world’s first inflight shopping channel, EmiratesRED.

The new system from Thales will also provide an enhanced ‘live’ television solution that offers a broader choice of live television and news in the highest available definition at 40,000 feet.

Emirates’ customers can also look forward to enhanced passenger connectivity with Optiq – the first smart display in the industry to offer two Bluetooth connections, built-in Wi-Fi for passengers to pair multiple devices including phones, tablets, headphones or even game controllers, while supporting up to 60 watts USB-C to fast-charge personal devices.

To further enrich passenger engagement, Emirates has chosen a variety of AVANT Up digital services including highly integrated personalisation features, expanded personal electronic device (PED) capabilities, and user interface enhancements which also enable visually impaired passengers to have an immersive experience.

Emirates is also the first airline globally to select Thales’ Pulse, a patented power management technology which will ensure that charging performance will be unaffected no matter how many users are charging their devices at the same time.

Reflecting a shared vision to innovate and shape future inflight experiences, Emirates and Thales also continue to collaborate on programs through Dubai’s Aviation X-Lab, an aviation-specific incubator.

Emirates aircraft photo gallery:

Emirates today announced plans to debut its newly retrofitted A380s featuring its latest Premium Economy cabins to five new cities from December – New York JFK, San Francisco, Melbourne, Auckland and Singapore. The airline will also add more Premium Economy seats on services to London Heathrow and Sydney, as its newly enhanced aircraft sporting refreshed cabins roll into scheduled service.

The airline aims to offer customers more opportunities to experience its highly acclaimed Premium Economy product, and its latest deployment plans will also see 85 A380s back in the sky by December, well-timed to serve the year-end travel demand.

Emirates’ enhanced A380s with Premium Economy to New York JFK, San Francisco, Melbourne, Auckland and Singapore will operate as follows:

• To New York JFK, Emirates will operate with its newly retrofitted A380 on EK203 and EK 204, starting from 1 December.
• To Auckland, Emirates will debut its Premium Economy cabin on EK 448 and EK 449, starting 15 January 2023.
• From 1 February 2023, Melbourne will become the second Australian destination to be served with the signature Emirates A380 featuring Premium Economy. Services will be deployed on EK 406 and EK 407.
• San Francisco will become the second US destination to be served by the retrofitted A380 with refreshed interiors on EK 225 and EK 226, starting on 15 February 2023.
• Emirates’ enhanced A380 with Premium Economy will land in Singapore for the first time on 1 March 2023, operating as EK 354 and EK 355.

Emirates will also update its schedules to London Heathrow, Sydney and New York JFK with its retrofitted A380 aircraft operating on the following services:

• From 15 December 2022, Sydney will become the first city in the Emirates network to offer Premium Economy seats on all flights, with the introduction of the airline’s retrofitted aircraft on EK 414 and EK 415.
• From 1 January 2023, London Heathrow will receive its third daily service with Premium Economy, with the new product debuting on EK 005 and EK 006.
• From 15 March 2023, Emirates will operate its second A380 with Premium Economy to New York JFK on EK 201 and EK 202.

Emirates will also start A380 services with a Premium Economy debut to Christchurch from 26 March 2023, as an extension of the Dubai to Sydney service, operating with EK 412 and EK 413.

Scaling up A380 operations

With travel demand the strongest it’s been in more than two years, Emirates will provide customers more choice and a better experience as it ramps up A380 services to 42 destinations by the end of March 2023. In tandem, the airline is optimising its network to meet robust demand and enhancing its existing schedules to over 400 A380 departures from Dubai, offering 460,000 weekly A380 seats by March 2023, including 81,000 seats across its premium cabins, offering the very best in customer comfort.

By year end, the airline will be serving close to a third of its network with its flagship on 85 A380s as it unlocks more destinations like Houston, Bengaluru, Perth, Auckland, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur, with additional cities to be announced in the coming weeks. With an expanded list of cities, Emirates will have recovered 75% of its pre-pandemic A380 network. The airline is also adding frequencies to popular cities already served by its flagship, bringing greater resiliency and stability to its operation.

Raising the bar for premium air travel

Since Emirates debuted its Premium Economy Class to London, Paris and Sydney, customer response has been overwhelmingly positive with demand exceeding expectations, demonstrating its appeal and willingness of travellers to trade-up and try the quiet luxury and meticulously customised experience it offers.

On a four-class Emirates A380, the Premium Economy cabin is located at the front of the main deck with 56 seats laid out in a 2-4-2 configuration. In the cabin, every inch of space anticipates customer needs with a generous seat pitch and width for working and relaxing, and customised features that offer function and convenience like in-seat charging points and a side cocktail table. The experience is rounded off with expertly curated in-flight amenities, an inventive menu and extensive beverage options.

The Emirates A380 experience has long been taking passenger comfort to new levels, with an extensive suite of products that turn the journey itself into a destination, including one of the industry’s largest screens for customers to enjoy the airline’s award-winning in-flight entertainment system, ice. Customers travelling in First and Business Class cabins can enjoy the aircraft’s signature features such as the popular Onboard Lounge and fully flat seats in Business Class, as well as private suites and Shower Spas in First Class.

Emirates recently announced plans to kick-off of its fleet retrofit programme, consisting of a multi-billion dollar investment to ensure customers continue to have the best experience in the sky. Starting from November, the airline will begin intensive work to upgrade and retrofit the interior cabins of 67 Airbus A380 and 53 Boeing 777 aircraft, with one aircraft rolling out into service every 16 days. By 2025, nearly 4,000 new Premium Economy seats will be installed, 728 First Class suites refurbished and over 5,000 Business Class seats upgraded to a new style and design.

Emirates is the world’s largest operator of the A380, with 118 double-decker aircraft in its fleet. Since A6-EVF, the first A380 reactivated in 2020 began flying, the operating fleet has clocked in more than 31,000 trips worldwide, carrying over 10 million passengers.

In other news, Emirates carried more than 10 million passengers on nearly 35,000 flights to 130 destinations this summer.

Having anticipated the strong return of travel demand, Emirates worked closely with its airport partners to operate as scheduled, minimise travel disruptions, and take customers to their planned holidays and trips to see friends and family across the world over the summer.

The airline also ramped up operations to serve customer demand during this busy period, reinstating daily services to London Stansted, and increasing flights to 33 cities on popular routes across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, as well as to favourite holiday spots like the Seychelles, Maldives, Mexico and Miami.

In June, Emirates added Tel Aviv to its global network and in July it added a third daily flight to London Gatwick to serve travellers impacted by capacity cuts at Heathrow.

The iconic Emirates A380, the world’s largest commercial jet, was also deployed to serve high customer demand at over 30 cities around its network.

On ground, the airline re-opened and was operating 32 signature Emirates Lounges, including 25 dedicated lounges at major airports across its network, to provide frequent flyers and premium travellers with a comfortable haven to rest and refresh during their journey. The airline had also reinstated its trademark complimentary Chauffeur Drive airport transfers for First and Business Class customers in nearly all cities it serves.

Dubai International (DXB) is the world’s busiest international airport. With millions of Emirates customers arriving, departing, and transiting through DXB each month, the airline ensured smooth operations at its 24/7 hub with close co-ordination and additional resources deployed throughout the airport eco-system.

Travellers benefited from the airline’s investments in services and digital initiatives to reduce wait-times at the airport and facilitating a smooth flow for customers to complete their formalities and get to where they are going.

During the summer months:

• over 3.8 million travellers across the network checked-in online via emirates.com and the Emirates App
• over 500,000 travellers used the 22 self-service check-in kiosks and 38 baggage drop facilities in Dubai Terminal 3
• over 11,000 travellers utilised Emirates’ home check-in services, which are complimentary for First Class passengers departing Dubai, entirely skipping the airport check in queue and proceeding straight to immigration

Emirates continues to rebuild its network and capacity as travel restrictions ease. It is currently operating at 74% of its pre-pandemic network/capacity and plans to increase that to 80% by year end. The airline is also commencing in November a US$2 billion retrofit programme to equip 120 aircraft with its latest onboard products.

Emirates aircraft photo gallery:

Emirates has made this announcement:

Priding itself on a brand promise of ‘Fly Better’, Emirates is investing over US$ 2 billion to enhance its inflight customer experience, including a massive programme to retrofit over 120 aircraft with the latest interiors, plus an array of other service improvements across all cabins starting in 2022.

Sir Tim Clark, President Emirates Airline said: “While others respond to industry pressures with cost cuts, Emirates is flying against the grain and investing to deliver ever better experiences to our customers. Through the pandemic we’ve continued to launch new services and initiatives to ensure our customers travel with the assurance and ease, including digital initiatives to improve customer experiences on the ground. Now we’re rolling out a series of intensive programmes to take Emirates’ signature inflight experiences to the next level.”

Some of Emirates’ latest initiatives include: elevated meal choices, a brand new vegan menu, a ‘cinema in the sky’ experience, cabin interior upgrades, sustainable choices and a generous approach to the little touches that make travel memorable.

Starting from August, Emirates’ passengers can look forward to:

New Inspirations, New Menus:  An award-winning team of chefs, a world-class catering team and a wide variety of suppliers have been assembled to design and deliver the best fine dining experience in the sky. New menus will be served on select Emirates routes in First Class, featuring dishes such as pan-fried salmon trout with moqueca sauce and creole rice, roasted duck breast with orange thyme jus, steamed broccolini and fondant potatoes. New menus will also be introduced to Business and Economy on the 1^st of September.

Purposefully Vegan Choices: Emirates’ new vegan menu is carefully curated to cater to the growing numbers of customers pursuing this thoughtful lifestyle. Vegans, or anyone interested in a delicious and healthy plant-based meal, will enjoy handcrafted gourmet dishes such as pan-roasted king oyster mushrooms, flavoursome jackfruit biryani and sliced kohlrabi garnished with burnt orange. Desserts are a decadent affair with choices of chocolate truffle cake with hazelnut, pistachio and gold leaf, or green grape tart adorned with candied rose petals, vanilla custard, and berry compote glistening with yuzu pearls.

The Champagne and Caviar Experience: Emirates’ First Class experience, always a benchmark for service excellence, has been upped a notch in 2022. Customers can now savour unlimited portions of Persian caviar as part of the ‘dine on demand’ service, with an exquisite pairing of the world-renowned Dom Perignon vintage champagne. Emirates is the only airline with an exclusive agreement to offer the luxury brand on-board.

Cinema in the Sky: First Class customers can create a memorable movie moment on-board by ordering cinema snacks as they enjoy the 5,000 channels on Emirates’ ice inflight entertainment system. The cinema snack menu includes moreish classics such as lobster rolls, juicy sliders, edamame, and salted popcorn, and can be ordered on demand. All passengers can also curate their own ice experience before their flight, simply by browsing and pre-selecting movies or TV shows on the Emirates app, which can then be synced to ice the moment they board, maximising the seamless travel experience.

Farm to Fork – Sustainable Supply Chain: Emirates’ customers departing on flights from Dubai can begin crunching on fresh greens harvested from Bustanica, the world’s largest vertical farm and newly-opened US$40 million joint venture investment through Emirates Flight Catering. Emirates is continuing to invest in sustainable operations and supply chains, seeking local food suppliers and farms wherever possible to serve the freshest produce on board.

Specialised Hospitality Training for Cabin Crew: Emirates has partnered with Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne, one of the world’s top hospitality management schools, to craft the Emirates Hospitality strategy and encourage inspiring customer experiences. Emirates Cabin Crew have already begun engaging in intensive training programmes focused on delivering the four service pillars: Excellence, Attentiveness, Innovation and Passion.

Upgraded Cabin Interiors in all Classes: The most significant investment is an extensive and record-breaking refurbishment of the aircraft fleet interiors, where cabins will be retrofitted with new or reupholstered seats, new panelling, flooring and other cabin features. Benefitting all Emirates passengers, every cabin class will be refreshed and new Premium Economy cabins installed. After the retrofit, Emirates will have a total of 120 aircraft offering Premium Economy seats – the only airline in the region to offer this cabin class, and enhanced interiors and features across all other cabins. With its first aircraft scheduled to roll into the Emirates Engineering Centre for retrofitting in November, planning work and trials have begun in earnest.

Additionally, Emirates confirms there will be more announcements about new products and services in the near future.

Emirates aircraft photo gallery: