How Gulf Airlines Use A380s to Win European Travelers

Emirates, Qatar Airways, and Etihad deploy superjumbos on London routes, offering triple the capacity of competitors despite similar flight frequencies.

Gulf carriers are deploying their largest aircraft to dominate Europe-Middle East routes, with Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad Airways capturing the lion’s share of seat capacity between London and their respective hubs this December.

Qatar Airways leads all carriers on the Europe-Middle East market with more than 102,000 seats each way on its Doha-London Heathrow route this month, according to flight schedule data. Emirates follows closely with 101,821 seats on its Dubai-Heathrow service, operating 213 flights in each direction.

The capacity gap between Gulf carriers and their competitors becomes stark when comparing seat counts to flight frequencies. While flydubai operates 217 monthly flights between Dubai and Moscow Vnukovo, nearly matching Emirates’ London Heathrow frequency, the low-cost carrier’s Boeing 737 fleet offers just 36,650 seats each way — less than one-third of Emirates’ widebody capacity.

Emirates deploys the Airbus A380 superjumbo on most London Heathrow flights, with the Boeing 777-300ER filling remaining slots. The carrier extends its London network to Gatwick and Manchester airports, ranking third and fourth in seat capacity with 54,031 and 52,746 seats each way, respectively, on those routes.

Etihad Airways rounds out the top five Europe-Middle East routes by capacity, operating four daily rotations between Abu Dhabi and London Heathrow with 50,820 seats each direction. The UAE flag carrier splits service between the A380 and Boeing 787-9.

The three major Gulf hubs — Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi — are leveraging geographic position and aircraft size to capture connecting traffic between Europe and destinations across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. London emerges as the primary European target, with the three carriers collectively offering more than 250,000 monthly seats across multiple London airports.

Turkish Airlines operates a different strategy from its Istanbul hub, focusing on frequency over capacity. The carrier holds three of the top six routes by flight count, serving Jeddah with 169 monthly flights each way, Tehran with 138, and Beirut with 132. All routes originate from the new Istanbul Airport.

The flydubai-Moscow corridor represents the second-busiest route by frequency after Emirates’ Dubai-Heathrow service. Operating 7 daily flights split between the 737-800 and 737 MAX 8, flydubai maintains connectivity despite reduced service from European carriers to Russia.