Emirates Dubai-San Fransico flight begins service

Emirates has marked the arrival of its first non-stop service between Dubai and San Francisco, at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

According to the airline, Emirates promises Bay Area travellers and businesspeople an opportunity to reach Dubai and key transit markets including the Indian Subcontinent and Africa easily and more quickly than ever before. The new service is expected to create a new connection between Northern California and Dubai, which is a destination for business and tourism.

The arrival of Emirates Airline to San Francisco will facilitate incoming tourism and business traffic, bringing in travellers from the Middle East, Indian Subcontinent and Africa; creating new jobs in the Bay Area while generating state and local tax revenue, and business revenues.  The non-stop air link will also help the growth of trade between California and the UAE which in 2007 saw close to $950 million worth of exports from the US state to the UAE.

Terming the new service as an economic boon for the city of San Francisco, city Mayor Gavin Newsom said that “Emirates’ new route will bring new jobs and revenue to San Francisco, while creating a vital new corridor for business and tourism between the Bay Area and Dubai”. The Bay Area has the fourth highest concentration of Forbes 2,000 Global Companies and 645 foreign-owned company subsidiaries.

The airline’s first Dubai-San Francisco non-stop service also marked the world’s longest green flight, on which Emirates employed multiple eco-efficient initiatives to save fuel and emissions. Emirates has made a multi-billion-dollar investment in new, eco-efficient aircraft, and on its San Francisco route it will deploy the state-of-the-art Boeing 777-200LR.  Emirates is said to have worked closely with government agencies in Dubai, Iceland, Russia, Canada the United States and other countries to plot the most environmentally-conscientious trip possible to save approximately 2,000 gallons of fuel and 40,000 pounds of carbon emissions on the 16-hour direct service.