DUBAI, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- Emirates Airline, the Dubai government-controlled carrier, and Qantas, Australia's biggest airline on Wednesday restructured their common flight plan to "allow both airlines to leverage their network strengths."
Both carriers said in an emailed statement that they applied to regulators to extend their partnership, which started in April 2013, into 2023.
Under the new joint partnership, they decided that Emirates will stop flying from Australia's Melbourne and Brisbane to New Zealand's Auckland and instead focus on its non-stop Auckland-Dubai service.
The statement said Emirates, the biggest carrier in the Middle East, "will retain its existing daily A380 flights from Dubai to New Zealand's Christchurch via Sydney."
In addition, the world's biggest customer of the Airbus A380 plane said it is also evaluating potential new direct services between New Zealand and Dubai.
At the same time, the statement said Qantas will increase the frequency of its services between the two countries to provide wider choice across the Tasman region of New Zealand, by adding seven new return flights per week between Melbourne and Auckland and an additional two return services per week between Brisbane and Auckland.
President of Emirates airline, Sir Tim Clark, said "Re-authorisation of the partnership will allow us to leverage our combined network strengths to offer customers more flight choices."
Qantas Group CEO, Alan Joyce, said "Since 2013 we have offered more choices and a larger network to eight million passengers who have travelled more than 65 billion kilometres on our joint network."
Since the start of the alliance, Qantas had been the only foreign carrier which is allowed to fly in its A380 aircraft to Dubai International Airport's terminal 3 which was solely used by Emirates Airline.
However, in late August, Qantas said it will stop flying its planes to Dubai as the Australian flagship carrier opted to re-route its daily A380 flights from Sydney via Dubai to London, also known as the "Kangaroo route," via Singapore's Changi Airport instead.
