One city pair where you'll find an abundance of Emirates A380s is Dubai to London. In fact, for the month of August 2023, the airline sees six daily A380 services to London Heathrow. This is also bolstered by another three daily services to London Gatwick. With this incredible frequency of service using the world's largest passenger aircraft, we thought it would be interesting to take a deep dive into Emirates' A380 operations to the UK Capital.

The Airbus A380 is undoubtedly an essential aircraft type for the Dubai-based airline we all know and love as Emirates. At the time of this article's publication, Planespotters.net lists the carrier as having 119 Airbus A380s! 89 of these are active, while the other 30 are parked.

15 years of A380 service

Emirates first introduced the A380 to London in December 2008 with service to Heathrow. This was the airline's second-ever A380 route, with Dubai to New York JFK launching a few months prior. Since then, A380 services to London have only expanded. It would take another six years for the airline to grow its A380 operations to another London area airport: London Gatwick.

In March 2014, Emirates became London Gatwick's first A380 airline. This inaugural service departed Dubai as flight EK9 and departed Gatwick as EK10. As reported by the website Business Traveller, Hubert Frach, who was at the time Emirates' divisional SVP commercial operations west, stated,

Photo: GCMap.com

As part of the same inaugural flight celebrations, Guy Stephenson, Chief Commercial Officer of London Gatwick, called the A380 "one of the modern marvels of aviation engineering," adding, "As such, we have dedicated part of Gatwick's £1 billion investment in transforming its infrastructure, creating a stand designed specifically with the world's largest aircraft in mind."

You may be aware that the airline also serves London Stansted. While this facility is technically capable of A380 operations, the airline currently has a double-daily frequency to Stansted utilizing the Boeing 777-300ER.

Photo: Riik@mctr via Wikimedia Commons

Emirates has flown the A380 to Stansted in the past, though this was not a regular passenger service. Rather, in the Summer of 2021, Emirates' Airbus A380 made its first trip to London Stansted Airport. The airline flew the superjumbo to this facility to pick up the Arsenal football club ahead of the Florida Cup. Emirates was - and continues to be - a major sponsor of the Arsenal football club, even dedicating an A380 livery to the sports team.

Nine daily A380 flights

When it comes to current regular Emirates A380 services to London, the airline does indeed operate an astounding nine daily flights to the English capital. With six flights to Heathrow and another three to Gatwick, these are the following departure times from Dubai, arranged in order of flight number:

• EK1: 07:45
• EK3: at 14:15
• EK5: at 15:45
• EK7: at 02:30

EK9, EK11, and EK15 to Gatwick, respectively, depart at 14:55, 02:45, and 08:00. And finally, two more A380 flights out of Dubai don't quite follow the sequence of flight numbers: Headed to Heathrow, these are EK29, which leaves at 09:40, and EK31, departing at 11:25.

Photo: Mehdi Photos | Shutterstock

Thus, between the first flight of the day and the last, there is a 13-hour and 15-minute window for Emirates A380 departures to London. With nine flights in total, this equates to an average of approximately one service departing every 90 minutes! Considering this level of frequency, you should have no problem catching the 'next' flight to London if you miss your connecting flight at Dubai International.

The journey from Dubai to London has a flight time of around 7 hours and covers approximately 5,500 kilometers (3,420 miles).

Flying from London Heathrow to Dubai, we have the following scheduled departure times:

• EK2: 14:20
• EK4: 20:40
• EK6: 22:15
• EK8: 09:05
• EK30: 16:50
• EK32: 19:50

Departing Gatwick:

• EK10: 21:45
• EK12: 10:05
• EK16: 14:35

The average flight duration from London to Dubai is between six and six-and-a-half hours, depending on the service.

Explaining the popularity of this city-pair

So how can Emirates possibly support such a high number of seats between the two cities? Is there a lot of business and leisure travel between London and Dubai? Well, there are some. But it certainly can't account for nine daily A380 flights along with the two daily 777-300ERs to Stansted!

Well, in case it wasn't already apparent, the answer lies in Emirates' strategy of connecting the world through its hub at Dubai international airport. Indeed, a massive proportion of passengers are connecting onwards to other parts of the world.

Photo: Emirates

Of the 58 million passengers Emirates transported in 2019, 37 million of these – or 64% – transited Dubai. Looking at more recent data for the London market only, we found that from January to May 2023, the airline carried approximately 570,000 passengers from the three London airports to Dubai as their final destination. Across this same period, the airline had around 1.33 million London passengers. Crunching the numbers with this recent data, we can see that about 57% of Emirates customers from London connected through Dubai.

Where passengers are connecting to

So if passengers aren't flying to Dubai as their final destination, where are they coming from or going to? Well, it looks like the UK to India is Emirates' #1 market. This market sees twice as many passengers as #2 Australia. Pakistan, Thailand, Maldives, South Africa, Indonesia, Philippines, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka round out the top 10 country markets for January to May 2023.

At the city level, London to Male was the top market. This was followed by Bangkok, Sydney, Colombo, Dhaka, Melbourne, Phuket, Mauritius, Bengaluru, and Mumbai.

Photo: GCMap.com

So there's your deep dive into Emirates' London operations, with a special focus on the airline's A380 services. The airline appears to be dominating this route, using it to connect London to the world through Dubai International Airport.

Have you flown Emirates' A380s between London Gatwick or Heathrow and Dubai? Share your experiences by leaving a comment!