Back After 41 Months: Emirates Is Returning The Airbus A380 To Taipei

Simple Flying

By James Pearson

Published Jan 11, 2023

Emirates' A380 will reappear in Taiwan in August.

Emirates has confirmed the return of the A380 to Taipei after a three-and-a-half-year absence. Now bookable, it'll again use the superjumbo to Taiwan from this August, replacing the 777-300ER. It comes as Korean Air, which had planned to use the A380 between Seoul and Taipei for just two months, extends it through the year.

Emirates A380 to Taipei

As of January 11th, but still liable to change, Emirates expects to use the A380 to Taipei from August 1st. It'll run 1x daily. It began using the double-decker to the Taiwanese city daily in May 2016, ending in March 2020. It is now scheduled as follows, with all times local:

Dubai to Taipei: EK366, 03:40-16:15 (8h 35m block time)
Taipei to Dubai: EK367, 23:35-04:15+1 (8h 40m)

Click here for Dubai-Taipei flights.

The timings might seem unusual, but they're perfectly normal for Emirates' Far East flights. The 03:40 departure is fed by vast amounts of arrivals, primarily from across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, which land around 23:00-01:00. The 04:15 arrival feeds its largest Europe, Middle East, and North Africa-bound departure bank from 07:00-09:00.

Image: GCMap.

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Three-class A380s

When writing, it is clear that three-class equipment will be deployed on the route as first class is bookable. There will be 14 first class seats and 76 in business. But it isn't certain how many economy seats there will be, which dictates which configuration will be used.

An examination of Flightradar24 data for March 2020 indicates that it used both two-class and three-class equipment. When first was offered, it tended to use 517-seat A380s, those with 427 economy seats.

Assuming it'll continue to use 517-seaters, it'll replace the three-class, 354-seat 777-300ERs presently deployed. It means that each departure will have 46% more seats. The number in first will rise from 8 to 14 (+75%), business from 42 to 76 (+81%), and economy from 304 to 427 (+40%). That's a lot more seats to sell, especially in premium. Clearly, Emirates is confident.

Photo: Vincenzo Pace | Simple Flying.

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Where Taipei passengers go

Analysis of Emirates' Taipei operations for 2019, the last normal year, shows that it had 388,820 roundtrip seats for sale between Dubai and Taipei, according to OAG data. (I like the '388' bit.) Booking data indicates that it carried approximately 330,000 passengers, for an average seat load factor of 85%.

About 87% of passengers, a considerable proportion, transited Dubai, while 13% were point-to-point. Extremely few connected over Taipei or bridged both airports. The most popular transit markets Europe-Dubai-Taipei (~67% of connecting passengers), North Africa-Dubai-Taipei (~11%), and Middle East-Dubai-Taipei (~6%), according to booking data.

Photo: Vincenzo Pace I Simple Flying.

Istanbul-Dubai-Taipei was number one

The most popular airport-level origin and destination market was Istanbul Airport-Taipei via Dubai. Flying via Dubai adds a reasonable 14% to the non-stop distance. Cairo-Taipei was the second most popular market. The rest of the top ten, in order, were Lisbon, Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen, Barcelona, Casablanca, Vienna, Madrid, Zagreb, and Prague.

Click here for Istanbul-Taipei flights.

In 2019, Sabiha Gökçen, Zagreb, and Prague had both Emirates and flydubai. Now, Sabiha Gökçen and Zagreb are exclusively by increasingly important partner flydubai.

Have you flown Emirates to/from Taipei before? If so, share your experiences in the comments.