Emirates will increase its services to Beijing from 1st May, four months prior to celebrating the anniversary of its first flight to the city last year.

Initially the airline will increase its services from the current daily to 12 flights every week, and from 1st July the busy Dubai-Beijing route will feature a double-daily non-stop service.

Tim Clark, President Emirates Airline said: “China is the new economic powerhouse and the world is beating a path to its capital Beijing. Since the launch of our Dubai-Beijing route last September, we have experienced strong demand from countries on our network and consistently high seat load factors. We are in the business of creating convenient global air networks for our customers - both passengers and cargo - and the upcoming Olympic Games in 2008 will increase the tempo of demand for our services to Beijing.”

He added: “Our second daily to the city is win-win for customers, stakeholders and our business, which is the reason we earmarked the city for double dailies so soon after our launch.”

Emirates will operate the second daily with an Airbus A340-300 offering 267 seats in a three-class configuration - 12 seats in First Class, 42 in Business and 213 in Economy - and 13 tonnes of belly-hold cargo capacity. With the second daily, the airline will offer capacity in excess of 3,700 seats and 180 tonnes of cargo to Beijing every week.

Emirates commenced flights to mainland China in 2004 with its route from Dubai to Shanghai - a daily non-stop service operated by a Boeing 777-300ER, offering nearly 2,550 passenger seats and 160 tonnes of cargo weekly.

The airline also serves Hong Kong with 17 weekly passenger flights from Dubai and 10 Boeing 747-400F freighter services - offering a total of 1,200 tonnes of capacity.

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