Emirates announces additional flights to Mauritius

(eTN) – Dubai’s award-winning airline Emirates has just announced that they will increase their present number of flights between Dubai and Port Louis from 9 to 11 by December this year.

Mauritius’s tourism industry has been knocking on their government’s door for a while now, literally begging to have the protective policy towards national airline, Air Mauritius, changed and allow for more seats to the island, matching the increased bed capacity offered by resorts and hotels.

Clearly stung by the overwhelming success of neighboring Seychelles, where by the end of this year 25 weekly frequencies from Gulf airlines will come to Mahe – double daily by Emirates, daily by Qatar Airways, and an initial 4 flights a week by Etihad – have tourism stakeholders moved from asking to demanding from government that a similar approach be adopted to add more arrivals. However, there have also, according to a source from Mauritius, been words of caution, pointing to Air Seychelles, which had to drop their flights to Frankfurt as they were unable to compete with Gulf airlines in terms of pricing and frequencies offered. Air Mauritius supporters from the private and public sector will, therefore, closely watch what will happen to their load factors when the additional flights commence and “judgment has been reserved until we have sufficient data on how the added Emirates flights will affect loads on Air Mauritius” as the same source put it to this correspondent.

A 10th flight will commence from early November, while a month later, by early December, an 11th flight will begin, in time for the high season of Christmas and New Year.