Dubai’s Emirates airline plans to upgrade the aircraft servicing the St Petersburg route to a Boeing 777-300ER, increasing capacity and offering an enhanced on-board experience.

Six weekly EK175/176 flights, from Dubai to St Petersburg in Russia, will be operated with an Emirates Boeing 777-300ER from October 25 2015, instead of an Airbus 330-200. The up-gauge will be applied to a seventh flight per week on the December 1.

With the new Boeing 777-300ER, Emirates will be adding a capacity increase of 50 per cent to the route, which launched in November 2011. The new aircraft will also introduce the Emirates First Class Suite, a first for the route, plus 42 lie-flat Business Class seats and 310 spacious Economy Class seats.

 “Since 2011, when Emirates launched flights to and from St Petersburg, we have carried over 500,000 passengers on the route. Counting these figures alongside our double-daily flights to Moscow, takes the total to over 3.6 million passengers travelling on Emirates to and from Russia in the 12 years of operation, making it an important market not only for Emirates, but for Dubai as a destination,” said Thierry Aucoc, Emirates’ senior vice president, Commercial Operations – Europe and Russian Federation.

On board the Emirates Boeing 777-300ER, passengers in all three cabins can enjoy more than 2,000 channels of the latest movies, TV shows and music from around the world on the award-winning ice inflight entertainment system, all while enjoying specially created gourmet cuisine served by Emirates’ multi-lingual cabin crew.

As with all Emirates flights, passengers travelling on the route will be able to accumulate Skywards miles and benefit from a generous baggage allowance of 30 kg in Economy Class, 40 kg in Business Class and 50 kg in First Class. – TradeArabia News Service