Interest in Dubai is growing, other Arab airlines are heading to Prague
Prague Airport will see more flights to the Persian Gulf this year. The new state airline Flydubai has decided to enter the Czech market. Starting on December 5, the others will thicken the competition on the route from Dubai to Prague, their Boeing 737 will fly to the Czech capital four times a week.
In addition to Prague, the company, which was founded by the Dubai government in 2008, will add Bratislava and Sofia to its flight network. “Central and Eastern Europe has always been an important market for us,” said Flydubai Vice President Jeyhun Efendi.
This year, the company started flying in the mentioned regions, for example, to Sarajevo, Zagreb or Moscow. For the other mentioned cities, including Bratislava and Sofia, these are nevertheless the first direct flights to the United Arab Emirates.
The end of visas has boosted demand
Not so for Prague. One of the world’s giants, Emirates, has been flying between the Czech capital and Dubai since 2010. Due to the great interest of passengers two years later in the daily deployment process, the Boeing 777 remote machine. With the smaller Boeing 737, the Czech Travel Service also flies to Dubai six times a week under its face.
Interest in trips to the most populous Arab emirate is still growing rapidly. Among other things, March is behind it abolition of visas to the United Arab Emirates for Czechs. The tourist will save almost two thousand crowns for each trip, so a trip for the whole family is not a negligible amount.
Domestic travel agencies report double-digit growth
According to data from Prague Airport, 214,000 passengers traveled between Prague and Dubai last year, which was six percent more than the year before. This year, however, development has picked up speed. Nevertheless, the first eight months of this year brought a fourteen percent application, even larger numbers are given by domestic travelers. “However, Dubai serves not only as a destination for Czech tourists, but also as an important transfer point for trips further to Asia or Australia,” added airport spokeswoman Eva Krejčí.
According to her, Dubai has become one of the TOP10 busiest routes from Prague this year. Prices for return tickets at Flydubai will start at 11,900 crowns. On the other hand, Czech Airlines withdrew from the route to the Persian Gulf at the beginning of the year this year, when it canceled the connection to Abu Dhabi.