UK Edition
Essex to Dubai? The UK's most curious airline routes
New direct flights between Essex and Dubai will launch next summer, with Emirates keen to show Middle Eastern travellers the delights of, er, Peterborough.
The daily route from the UAE city to London Stansted is the latest addition to the carrier’s 154 destinations worldwide, and will be the third in London, joining Heathrow and Gatwick.
The airline said Stansted, just outside of Bishop’s Stortford, enjoyed a “strategic position close to the tech and pharma hubs of Cambridge and Peterborough”.
The route, which begins on June 8, also brings closer destinations such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Mumbai to East Anglian holidaymakers, through Emirates’ hub at Dubai.
“We pride ourselves as an airline in connecting people and economies and the addition of the Stansted gateway is the latest on our growing network,” said Laurie Berryman, Emirates vice president in the UK.
The route will be served by the airline’s new three-class Boeing 777-300, with six first class seats, 42 business, and 306 economy. A first-class return to Dubai from Heathrow, for example, costs upwards of £5,500.
It brings Emirates’ total number of routes between Dubai and the UK to seven, with 133 non-stop flights a week.
UK cities linked non-stop with Dubai
- London (Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted)
- Birmingham
- Manchester
- Glasgow
- Newcastle
If a link between Stansted - better-known for its low-cost carriers and eastern European destinations - and Dubai raises eyebrows, don't forget the new route Qatar Airways announced in October.
Chief executive Akbar al Bakerm admitted he had to convince some of his colleagues that Cardiff-Qatar was exactly what the airline was missing.
“Wales is a huge developing state,” he told the BBC at the time.
“It was important that we operate and connect the people of Wales and the South West with the rest of the world.”
For fans of curious air links, there are many more around the world.
Qatar Airways, for instance, has already made a success of direct flights to Atlanta, Chengdu, Djibouti, Ho Chi Minh City, Kiev, Skopje, Tbilisi, Yerevan and the Ugandan town of Entebbe.
From Dubai, Emirates boasts a number of lesser-known holiday options, including Mashhad, Luanda and Kolkata.
And if Wizz Air can fill flights from Doncaster to Romania'a Cluj-Napoca, why shouldn’t Emirates be able to make good use of Stansted-Dubai?
Doncaster Sheffield airport also has links with Lublin and Katowice in Poland, alongside more mainstream destinations like Faro, Amsterdam and Malaga. Liverpool, meanwhile, is connected with Bacau (Romania again) and Nowy Dwor Mazowiecki (Poland).
Edinburgh's long-haul links are few and far between, but they do include Hartford, Connecticut.
And from Cork, there’s just one long-haul service – to, err, Providence, Rhode Island. Explain that one.