Dubai-based Emirates airline has started to ramp up some of its routes to the US that it had scaled back as a result of an electronics ban implemented in March by the Trump administration, its president has said in an interview to The National newspaper.

The ban, imposed on 10 carriers, disrupted operations of a number of carriers, with the drop in demand translating into commercial losses. The ban was lifted recently on most of the carriers.

“We’ve already put Orlando back up to a daily and we’ve seen extraordinary high seat factors on Boston and Seattle on the one frequency,” Tim Clark said. “I would say it’s not going to be long before we start re-assessing a reintroduction of our capacity into the US… I’m hoping we can restore that fairly soon.”

For Emirates the ban resulted in a dip on routes to the US by as much as 20 per cent, said Clark. “It wasn’t just the laptop ban, it was the Muslim country ban [by the US] which had a halo effect on the whole of our part of the world including west Asia; India, Pakistan and everywhere else, because a lot of people felt they weren’t welcome there that they were going to have difficulties,” said Clark.

“There was a marked fall-off, particularly in the Indian subcontinent. The two [bans] taken together we saw major double-digit falls in demand for our services. That’s why we pulled the Boston second frequency, the Seattle second frequency, the Los Angeles second frequency and reduced Orlando and Fort Lauderdale.”