Emirates says it has closed the summer travel season ahead of expectations and is heading into winter with booking momentum building across a widening range of markets.
Between July and August, the airline carried more than 8.6 million passengers, maintaining seat load factors well above 75% across its network.
Routes to and from Indonesia, Côte d’Ivoire and the UK posted particularly strong performance. Emirates is currently operating at around 93 per cent of its pre-disruption capacity.
Winter bookings, which begin in late October, are tracking positively. South Africa, Brazil, India, Portugal, Egypt, Ghana, Colombia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are among the markets where demand is running ahead of last year. Premium travel continues to grow, with the Americas recording the strongest gains in Premium Economy demand.
Dubai inbound traffic held up well through the summer. In late August alone, more than half a million passengers arrived in Dubai on Emirates flights, up 7 per cent on the same period last year.
Since January 2026, Emirates has taken delivery of 18 aircraft, comprising 11 A350s and seven Boeing 777 freighters, with another six A350s expected before year-end.
The retrofit programme has now covered 104 aircraft across the fleet, bringing the total number offering Premium Economy and the airline’s latest cabin products to 137. That figure is expected to reach 155 by December.
Premium Economy is now available across 90 destinations, with Paris, Delhi and Stockholm among six additional routes set to receive the product before year-end. Close to 50 Emirates aircraft have been fitted with Starlink connectivity, with installations continuing alongside the retrofit programme.
On the network side, Helsinki joins Emirates routes on October 1, served by the A350. Additional daily services are being added to Accra, Tokyo Narita, Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.
One of the daily Delhi services will be upgraded to an A380. The A350 will also be deployed to Larnaca, Malta, Nairobi and Hamburg from late October, followed by Mauritius in November.
The Emirates-flydubai partnership now covers more than 214 unique destinations across more than 100 countries, with over 4,600 connection opportunities through Dubai.
Since the partnership launched in 2017, the two carriers have carried more than 28 million passengers on their integrated network. Recent flydubai additions include Chittagong, Benghazi, Aleppo, Bangkok’s Don Mueang Airport and, in September, Pokhara in Nepal.
