Big news from Emirates today.  They announced daily service between Newark and Athens on a Boeing 777-300ER jet starting 12 March 2017.  The Emirates press release details the flight as an extension of their Dubai-Athens route.

an airplane flying over land

The flights will operate as follows:

EK209 departing DXB 10:50 arriving ATH 14:25
EK209 departing ATH 16:40 arriving EWR 22:00
EK210 departing EWR 23:45 arriving ATH 15:05 (next day)
EK210 departing ATH 17:10 arriving DXB 23:50

This flight is fairly big news for a few reasons.  Athens is a historically low-yield market and most of the time service runs seasonally from the NYC metro area.  For hubbed airlines which fly to Athens (United and Delta primarily) this is a big competitive upheaval, since Emirates will be operating their very nice 777-300ER (compared to the older 767s which most domestic carriers use for the route) which will have 8 First Class suites, 42 angled lie-flat seats in business, and 304 coach seats.

Basically it should offer a nicer product at a similar price to the US carriers.  Knowing Emirates, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them undercut prices a bit to drive demand.

While this is good news for consumers I think this will only fan the flames of the battle between US and Middle East carriers.  That said, if anyone from NYC wants to head to Greece this is a good opportunity to do so!

 

Are you excited about the new service?  Do you plan to travel to Greece on it?  Leave me some comments below!

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