Somehow I missed this, but JonNYC flags that Denver airport is talking about their next international flight add being Emirates to Dubai.
According to the airport head, “Our next (new) direct flight will likely be Dubai with Emirates.” It was surprising to hear because,
- Emirates hasn’t made the announcement yet, they’re getting scooped.
- This was offered in comments at the Lufthansa Airbus A380 inaugural.
Sounds like he let the cat out of the bag here! And it also looks like they’re aggressively pursuing Ethiopian Airlines for one-stop service via Europe to Addis Ababa.
We are also looking at the continent of Africa, to Ethiopia, with a direct flight.
The Ethiopian service would be subsidized by the airport. And it’s more non-stop competition to Europe for Lufthansa. Add this to a lot of new Emirates capacity (and Emirates is a United partner), JonNYC points out that together this could cost Denver its Lufthansa A380:
wacky opinion alert: Watch that LH A380 go poof if this were to come to fruition.
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) May 8, 2025
Denver airport is terrible for those flying in and out of the city. It’s far from downtown. TSA is a mess. The train between concourses breaks down all the time. But it’s a good connecting airport, United Airlines has tons of feed, so most of the big long haul service adds are from United partners. Southwest is weak, and this buries them further. Plus hurdles to jump through in getting to and through the airport are less significant for ultra-long haul flying since they represent a smaller percentage of the total trip.
Ultimately it’s not clear why they’d spend big to subsidize service to Africa that isn’t non-stop, since they already have plenty of service to Africa that isn’t non-stop, including on United and Lufthansa, on Turkish which recently started Denver service, and with new Emirates service. The Ethiopian flight is described as ‘direct’ and wouldn’t be able to make it non-stop to Addis in any case.
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