Emirates to fly NON-STOP between Malta and Dubai

Emirates has just announced its revised Malta-Dubai schedule and, without undermining the seriousness of the reasons behind the schedule change, the good news is it now includes a non-stop option between Malta and Dubai.

To date, Emirates has always flown the route via an intermediate destination: either Larnaca (Cyprus) or Tripoli (Libya). However, the situation in Libya (not least armed combat at the airport) has led to an understandable review of the use of Tripoli airport.

The change in schedule was initially supposed to see Malta-Dubai flights increasing to twice daily (one via Larnaca and the other via Tripoli). However, the new updated schedule will now see the Larnaca flight increased from 4xWeekly to daily (as planned) but the Tripoli flight cancelled and replaced with a dedicated 3xWeekly non-stop Malta-Dubai flight, flying Tuesday, Friday and Sunday.

The revised schedule is as follows:

3xweekly (Tuesday, Friday and Sunday):

• Dep Dubai 0930 – Arr Malta 1325
• Dep Malta 1735 – Arr Dubai 0100+1

Daily:

• Dep Dubai 0820 – Arr Larnaca 1105 – Dep Larnaca 1215 – Arr Malta 1410
• Dep Malta 1545 – Arr Larnaca 1910 – Dep Larnaca 2020 – Arr Dubai 0100+1

The fairly obvious upshot of this is if you want to fly from Malta to Dubai (or vice versa), ensure you book the non-stop flights (flight numbers EK745 from Dubai or EK8745 from Malta).

And finally…

A quick mention that, courtesy of those daring technological innovators Lufthansa, self check-in machines have arrived at Malta airport! (This story reminded me a little of the news articles on Cambodia’s first escalator…)