Carry On: News for business travellers

Third superjumbo flies daily to Auckland
Emirates’ three daily Airbus A380 services to Auckland offering 10,269 seats per week each way must the highest per capita in the world for the superjumbo. The three A380s come in and fly back through Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney at about the same time, making Auckland the only part of the Emirates network outside Dubai to have as many on the ground at one time.

The upgrading of the Brisbane service this week from a Boeing 777-300ER has added another 135 seats in each direction. A daily Boeing 777-300ER service also operates through Christchurch. From Auckland, Emirates offers the A380 service through to London, Manchester, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam and Moscow plus Zurich from January 2014 and Barcelona from February 2014.

Emirates, which started flying to New Zealand just over 10 years ago, has significantly grown its capacity into and out of New Zealand in recent years. From this October, it will have 1821 seats a day in each direction, compared with 1234 at the beginning of 2009. The video in the associated link shows phases of the journey of the first Emirates A380 service from Dubai to Auckland via Brisbane. It includes in-cockpit take off and landing sequences as well as aerial footage of the Auckland arrival.

Rhythm founder wins top tourism award
Hamish Pinkham, pictured above, whose Gisborne Rhythm & Vines Festival was voted one of the best places in the world to celebrate New Year’s Eve, has named Young Tourism Leader at this year’s tourism awards. He founded Rhythm & Vines while a student at the University of Otago. The first event, in 2003, attracted 1800 people; 10 years later it has grown to 30,000 over three days, including 8000 on-site campers.

Mr Pinkham’s The Rhythm Group now employs 12 full-time staff plus an event delivery team of up to 2000 at the Rhythm & Vines Festival. A second event, Rhythm & Alps, was staged for the first time in Wanaka this year. He has also purchased the Gisborne Wine and Food Festival, rebranding the event as Feast Gisborne.

Iran seeks air links to the US
Iran’s president has asked his country’s aviation authorities to study the possibility of resuming direct flights between Iran and the US for the first time in more than three decades. The Iranian semi-official ISNA news agency quoted Akbar Torkan, a presidential adviser, as saying Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who recently spoke to President Barack Obama during a visit to the UN in New York, wants to study the possibility of resuming direct flights between the two countries. Direct flights between the two countries ended after the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

Dubai thinks past twin-hub setup
Dubai International Airport, which is being expanded to handle 90 million passengers a year, could be shut in coming decades to focus traffic on a new super-hub under construction with as much as twice that capacity. Chief executive Paul Griffiths says the existing base will be abandoned if owning two hubs hampers the take up of flights at its new Al Maktoum International Airport, south of the city.

The airport company is evaluating plans to accelerate expansion of Al Maktoum and make room for top Emirates Airline to move in before 2025, lifting capacity to as many as 200 million travellers a year.  Airlines are notoriously hard to lure to new airports, particularly as Al Maktoum is 50km from Dubai City at the Dubai World Central aviation complex, which already handles freight services.

Discount carriers Jazeera Airways of Kuwait and Wizz Air of Hungary have agreed to use the facility, which opens on October 27.