Chart of the week #9: End of an era for Emirates's Dubai-Singapore-Melbourne flight

Recent media reports have broken the news that Emirates Airline will end its final 5th freedom route between Asia and Australia sometime next year. In regulatory fillings to the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore, Emirates notified them of their intention to cease flying the Dubai-Singapore-Melbourne route.

Emirates will continue flying non-stop flights between Dubai and Singapore, and Dubai and Melbourne. Emirates hasn’t made a formal announcement and the flight remains in the forward schedule, likely awaiting regulatory approval.

The reports have been met with a combination of sadness and nostalgia, as the cancellation brings the end to an era of Emirates’s 5th freedom flights between Dubai, Asia and Australia. When Emirates began regularly scheduled service to Melbourne in 1996, the A310 aircraft couldn’t make the trip non-stop. It utilised Singapore as fuel stop and has carried local traffic between Singapore and Dubai, and Dubai and Melbourne ever since.

In addition to this route, Emirates enjoyed and exploited 5th freedom rights between Singapore, Brisbane and Sydney, as well as between Bangkok and Sydney, and Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur. Emirates also operated onwards flights to New Zealand, carrying 5th freedom traffic across the Tasman (more about that later).

As longer range aircraft became available Emirates transitioned towards non-stop routes. Emirates now operates non-stop to Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney, and will be returning to Adelaide later this year. Perth was the first to received non-stop service aboard the B777-200, however Melbourne and Sydney had to wait for the introduction of the A340-500 in 2004 before non-stop services were established.

As we have analysed before, airlines are generally not that interested in exploiting 5th freedom routes. While 5th freedom rights are widely available, sustainable 5th freedom routes are limited to a small number of routes due to several idiosyncratic reasons.

What limits fifth freedom flights to Australia?

Even after the introduction of non-stop routes, one-stop services via Asia continued for several years. At first it may simply have been insufficient aircraft that could make the non-stop tri[ or demands for those aircraft on other routes.

A more compelling reason was the lack of cargo carrying capacity on non-stop passenger flights. High temperatures in Dubai limits the take-off performance of twin engined aircraft while the length of some sectors would require significant trade-offs to carry fuel. Meanwhile, once the A380 was introduced the limitation became volumetric. One-stop flights on the B777-300ERs enabled very large cargo payloads to be carried. As Emirates’s dedicated freighter fleet as grown, the need for additional cargo capacity on passenger aircraft has declined.

In addition to 5th freedom flights via Asia, Emirates has operated a variety of onward flights to New Zealand, carrying 5th freedom traffic between Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney to Auckland, and Melbourne and Sydney to Christchurch. Only Sydney-Christchurch remains.

These flights exploit the low utilisation of the aircraft as many Emirates flights to the Australian east coast spend a large amount of time on the ground in Australia as Emirates seek to optimally schedule flights from and into Dubai’s connecting banks, thereby reducing passenger transit times in Dubai. This exploits the low marginal cost of operating these flights as the aircraft would otherwise be idle.

Most of these have been withdrawn over time. We have analysed this in detail alongside the ACCC’s decision to renew the Qantas-Emirates joint venture. While the marginal cost was low, the large capacity likely generated overcapacity in the market at time with limited ability for Emirates to manage capacity with smaller aircraft. Furthermore, the flights generated operational risks that comprised the prime flights (e.g. knock-on delays).

Should the ACCC have rejected the Qantas-Emirates Joint Venture?

The trend is clear: Emirates appear to have little interest in 5th freedom flights. In fact, if it were not for the ACCC’s attention to the Sydney-Christchurch, Emirates would likely have dropped that as well! It’s the end of an era and enjoy those cheap milage tickets while you still can!

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In case you missed it, last week we didn’t have a “chart of the week”, instead taking the time to reflect on one year of Analytic Flying. The last “chart of the week” was the week before and looked at how larger narrowbody like the B737-800 allowed domestic airlines to carry more passengers utilising less flights!