Emirates targets US and Italy routes with quick Airbus A380 rollouts

Emirates Airline has 55 Airbus A380s in its fleet with 85 more to come. Aziz Shah / AP Photo

Leading superjumbo operator Emirates has begun a blitz on western markets that will bring three more cities in as many days into the network served by the Dubai-based carrier's Airbus A380 jets.

The airline’s first A380 service to San Francisco left Dubai at 8:50am local time on Monday and is slated to land at 12:50 pm in California. A double-decker service to Milan follows at 3:40pm, landing at 7:35pm Italian time.

The quick-fire rollout, which will also see a superjumbo deployed on the Dubai-Houston route on Wednesday, underscores the global ambitions of Emirates as it establishes Dubai as a crossroads linking all of the world's leading economies. Already the world's largest carrier by international traffic, or passengers carried times miles flown, the company has 85 A380s still to come beyond the 55 now in its fleet.

“The logistics of launching three new A380 destinations would be, for many, an insurmountable task,” said Hubert Frach, senior vice president for commercial operations, west. “It’s challenges like this that the team at Emirates relish.”

In the US, the A380 replaces smaller Boeing 777-300ERs on the single daily San Francisco and Houston flights, with five of nine Emirates routes to the world's largest economy featuring the industry's biggest passenger jet, Dallas having joined New York and Los Angeles on October 1.

The Houston flight departs Dubai at 9:30am, touching down in Texas at 4:05pm local time.

On the Milan Malpensa route the A380 will replace one of three Boeing 777 services to Italy’s financial capital.

The Emirates fleet of 55 A380s is equivalent to one-third of all the superjumbos flying worldwide. It has 140 on order, or 40 percent of the overall total of 318.

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