Emirates A380 attacks Kiwi route

Emirates is set to cause a major stir on the trans-Tasman route, after confirming plans to deploy the world’s largest passenger jet on its Sydney to Auckland services from February next year.

The Dubai-based carrier announced this morning it will deploy its first 489-seat Airbus A380s on its New York route from October and London from December and then Sydney-Auckland.

Then next year it will start flying the jet to fly from Dubai to Sydney and onward to Auckland.

"While we are still debating our first commercial A380 route, it has always been our intention to fly the aircraft on capacity-constrained trunk routes," said the airline’s president Tim Clark in a statement.

Emirates is the largest A380 customer, with 58 of the giant aircraft on order. Qantas is the second biggest airline customer with 20 of the jets on order.

The Sydney-Auckland route, which last year was the largest air route into Australia with 1.25 million passengers carried, is hardly capacity constrained.

Nor is Emirates filling the smaller 364 seat Boeing 777-300ER aircraft already flown on the route.

In the busy holiday month of December Emirates only filled 63 per cent of its seats between Australia and New Zealand, compared to Qantas which filled 84 per cent of its seats and Air NZ which filled 78 per cent of its seats.

But five years since it launched trans-Tasman flights, Emirates has often posed the argument its jets would otherwise spend 11 hours on the tarmac at Sydney after arriving from Dubai if they did not fly the route.

Despite having low passenger loads, Emirates has also argued it makes good money carrying freight on the route.

Air New Zealand declined to comment. But in the past Air New Zealand and Qantas have accused Emirates of "price dumping" since it commenced trans-Tasman flights five years ago. The extra seats bought on by the A380 are likely to place pressure on airfares. It will mean the number of seats on the route will grow around 45,000 a year.

Emirates is set to become the third airline to fly the A380 into Sydney. Singapore Airlines launched the world’s first A380 service between Singapore to Sydney last October.

Qantas which is due to receive its first A380 in August is expected to deploy its first super jumbo on its Melbourne-Los Angeles route in October, before possibly launching the jet on its Sydney-LA services by Christmas.