Carry on: Emirates' 1m passengers, Virgin's Mid-East pullback and more

Emirates reaches one million NZ passengers
Emirates says it has carried more than one million passengers to and from New Zealand during 2016, citing the success of its daily non-stop service between Auckland and Dubai.

When launched a year ago, it was the world’s longest commercial flight using a 266-seat Boeing 777-200LR. On October 20, this was upgraded to an Airbus A380 carrying up to 491 passengers.

The route is the longest flown by the double-decked aircraft. Emirates’ New Zealand regional manager, Chris Lethbridge, says the switch to the larger aircraft, which is also used on four other daily Emirates flights to New Zealand, proved highly successful.

“The average flight time northbound has been 16 hours 57 minutes and southbound the duration (usually with tail winds) has been 15 hours 38 minutes; somewhat better than scheduled flight times,” he says.

Virgin Australia pulls out of Middle East 
Virgin Australia has axed plans to fly between Perth and Abu Dhabi in favour of focusing on Asia and the US. The Perth-Abu Dhabi flights were scheduled to start on June 9. Instead, Virgin will restart flights between Melbourne and Los Angeles on April 4 and has imminent plans for a Melbourne-Hong Kong service. 

Qantas to codeshare with Israel's El-Al
Qantas and Israeli airline El-Al will codeshare on flights from Australia through Asia and South Africa. There are no direct flights between the two countries, though other connections are improving, with both Cathay Pacific and soon Singapore Airlines offering nonstop flights from Hong Kong and Singapore. One Qantas-El Al link will be through Johannesburg. Improved air services were on the agenda during the recent visit to Australia by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Garuda flies final Jumbo
Garuda Indonesia's final scheduled Boeing 747-400 operation has tentatively been set for late April 2017. The Jumbo, which has been phased out by many airlines, operates the Makassar-Jeddah service three times a week from March 25 to April 22. But after that, it will be replaced by an Airbus A330-300.

New tourism attractions get $2.5 million
The government is awarding $2.49 million in Tourism Growth Partnership funding for new attractions in Rotorua and Southland. The successful projects are:
• $810,000 to Skyfly for a zip-line canopy tour through native forest in Rotorua;
• $630,325 to Rainbow Springs Kiwi Encounter for a new state-of-the-art kiwi facility in Rotorua;
• $550,000 to for stage 2 development of Classic Motorcycle Mecca in Invercargill, including a new exhibition space and experiential components; and
• $500,000 toward the Curio Bay Tumu Toka Natural Heritage Centre and Experience in the Catlins.
A total of $23.54 million has been invested in 33 projects since the inception of the Tourism Growth Partnership in 2013.

Route news of the week
Qantas will begin flying daily to Bali from March 26, lifting the frequency of its Sydney-Denpasar services from four to seven B737-400 flights per week. Four flights a week will temporarily return from April 27 to May 28 before resuming to daily flights. Singapore Airlines’ low-cost carrier Scoot will launch a Singapore-Athens service on June 20 as its entry point for its first routes to Europe, The service will start with four flights a week using Boeing Dreamliner 787s. Joint Malaysian-Indonesian owned Malindo Air has tentatively scheduled a daily Kuala Lumpur-Denpasar-Brisbane route from March 31 using a Boeing 737-800 aircraft. The Kuala Lumpur-Denpasar route will also see an increase from two to four times daily. Xiamen Airlines plans to introduce additional weekly frequency on the Xiamen-Melbourne route, during peak travel season. The third weekly service will be from June 27 to September 3 and September 26 to October 8. This route is operated by Boeing 787-8 aircraft.