Dubai's national carrier Emirates has launched a new, five times-a-week service to Santiago International Airport (SCL), via the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo (GRU), marking the airline’s first arrival in Chile.  

 

The new service will see Emirates fly an additional five times a week to Sao Paulo, complementing the airline’s existing daily A380 flight between Dubai and Sao Paulo. In total, Emirates will now fly 12 times a week to Sao Paulo. 

 

The new Santiago flight will be a linked service with Sao Paulo, meaning that customers in South America can now travel between the two cities in unprecedented style and comfort. Citizens from both Brazil and Chile only need ID cards to travel to either country, said a statement from Emirates.

 

On board the inaugural Boeing 777-200LR flight, which was welcomed at both Sao Paulo and Santiago airports with a water cannon salute, was a group of special guests and media.

 

Hubert Frach, Emirates Divisional Senior Vice President, Commercial Operations, West said: "We are very pleased to see the interest this new route has created since it was announced in late January, reflected in strong bookings from and to Santiago."

 

"Santiago is a very popular leisure and business destination, and this new service will offer customers across our global network, particularly from key inbound markets such the Far East, Middle East and West Asia, a great travel option to South America," he noted.

 

Emirates is deploying its newly refurbished two-class Boeing 777-200LR on this route. The new plane offers 38 Business Class seats in a 2-2-2 layout, and 264 seats in Economy Class. While the Business Class seats are in the same design and shape of Emirates’ latest lie-flat seats, they are now two inches wider for a more comfortable journey. 

 

The seats retain the champagne coloured finish and diamond stitch pattern on a full leather cover, and the ergonomically designed headrest revealed on Emirates’ newest Boeing 777 Business Class seats in November.

 

Frach said the new service will also give travellers from Chile the opportunity to experience the Dubai airline's superior product and service, and offer them more convenient travel options with Emirates to Sao Paulo, Dubai and onward to destinations across its network.

 

Flight EK263 will depart Dubai on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at 9.05am local time, arriving in Sao Paulo at 5 pm before departing again at 6.30 pm and arriving into Santiago at 9.40 pm on the same day. 

 

The return flight EK264 will depart Santiago on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at 1.10 am, arriving in Sao Paulo at 5.55 am. EK264 will depart once again from Sao Paulo at 7.45 am bound for Dubai where it will arrive at 5.15 am the next day, connecting the flights to many of the points beyond on the extensive Emirates and flydubai partnership network. 

 

The arrival of Emirates in Chile is an important symbol of trust and confidence in the country, to its authorities and to how Groupe ADP, Vinci Airports and Astaldi Concessioni, through Nuevo Pudahuel, are setting a new standard of service at Arturo Merino Benítez Airport. 

 

"We are proud that Emirates accepted our proposal because it will not only forever change how Chileans travel to the Middle East, but also because we are strengthening our relations with our operators," remarked Nuevo Pudahuel CEO Nicolas Claude. 

 

Timings of the new service are scheduled to provide seamless connections to many Asian and Middle East routes, via a convenient stopover in Dubai. 

 

Passengers travelling from Sao Paulo can benefit from a morning departure in Sao Paulo and morning arrival in Dubai, making connecting to new destinations in Southeast Asia, China, Turkey, Egypt, Middle East, Africa and Europe convenient, said the Dubai airline in its statement.

 

Chile is a popular destination for business and leisure travellers around the world, in particular from Asian destinations such as China, South Korea, Japan, Thailand and India. Chile is also home to large Chinese and Middle East communities that can now take advantage of the new service, it added.-TradeArabia News Service