Dubai’s Emirates ramps up flights to Scotland

Emirates Airline, the world’s largest long-haul airline, will launch a second daily flight to Glasgow in Scotland from 1 June, the carrier said Tuesday. The Dubai-based airline said it expected 140,000 inbound passengers to use the service in 2012, boosting Glasgow’s local economy by AED187m ($272,000) annually. “This announcement illustrates our commitment to Scotland and to our wider UK route network in difficult economic times,” Salem Obaidalla, Emirates’ senior vice president of commercial operations for Europe and the Russian Federation, said in a statement. Gordon Matheson, leader of Glasgow City Council, said the airline’s existing route to Glasgow has generated more than AED931m for the local economy since its launch in 2004. Emirates last week warned Europe-bound passengers to brace for higher ticket prices as it grapples with an EU carbon trading scheme set to cost UAE carriers nearly $1.5bn. Dubai’s flagship carrier said it expected the plan aimed at capping airlines’ carbon emissions to cost it about $52m this year and well in excess of $650m by the end of the decade. Under the EU's plan to put a price on pollution, airlines now have to buy permits to help offset greenhouse emissions from jetliners operating in, to and from Europe. Airlines will face fines of up to €100 for every tonne of carbon dioxide they emit above a fixed limit; part of an EU bid to cut pollution by five percent through 2020.