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Emirates, the world’s best airline according to TripAdvisor 2017, has announced its plan to launch a new, five times a week, service from Dubai to Santiago International Airport (SCL), via the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, starting on 5 July.
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. Emirates’ 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. For travellers from Colombo, Emirates flight EK349 departing at 03:15hrs arrives in Dubai at 06:00hrs, offering a convenient three-hour connection to the new Sao-Paulo-Santiago flight. The return flights have a similarly convenient two and a half hour connecting time to flight EK348 departing Dubai at 07:45hrs for Colombo.
The new route will be operated with a two-class configured Boeing 777-200LR which offers 38 Business Class seats in a 2-2-2 configuration and 264 seats in Economy Class. The new 777 flight will also offer up to 14 tonnes of capacity for cargo, opening up access to more global markets for Chilean exports such as fish, seafood, cherries, flowers and general perishable goods. Commenting on the new Emirates route, Emirates Airline President Sir Tim Clark said, “The start of our operations to Chile underlines our commitment to South America with our fourth destination on the continent and another five flights to Sao Paulo. We are pleased to add a destination that has been in strong demand from our customers and look forward to working with stakeholders in Chile to provide our unique product and award-winning service to passengers there.”
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.
Santiago, the first destination in Chile to be served by Emirates, is the largest city of Chile accounting for nearly half of the nation’s GDP.