Emirates Airlines : More A380 Europe Destinations On Way For Kiwis

And a fifth Europe airport, Munich, will be added to the airline's A380 network in the new year.

Emirates, one of the fastest growing airlines in the world, says that the historic capital city of Rome will be the next destination slated for its flagship A380 aircraft, from December 1.

From October 1, the A380 will begin serving Johannesburg, followed by Kuala Lumpur as of December 1 and then from January 1, 2012, the A380 will be deployed on the Munich route.

With 15 Airbus A380s currently in its fleet, Emirates is the largest operator of the environmentally friendly double-decker aircraft, operating services from Dubai to Sydney and Auckland, London Heathrow (double-daily), Manchester, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Toronto, Seoul, Bangkok, Beijing, Shanghai, Jeddah, New York and Hong Kong.

The announcement of Emirates' first permanent scheduled A380 service to Italy comes on the back of its June 6 landing at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci airport to mark the celebrations for the airport's 50th anniversary, while commemorating 150 years of Italian unification.

Rome is currently served twice daily by Emirates, and the airline has a double daily service to Milan and a daily flight to Venice, all offering direct connections at Dubai from Emirates four daily New Zealand services.

The A380 service will operate daily as EK 97, departing Dubai at 9.10am (local time) and arriving at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci airport at 12.35 (local). The return flight, EK 98, departs Rome at 2.35pm (local) and arrives in Dubai at 11.05pm (local).

So far in 2011, Emirates has launched passenger flights to Basra and Geneva. Services to Copenhagen will commence this coming Monday and St Petersburg services will be launched on November 1, followed by Baghdad on November 13, and Rio and Buenos Aires in January 2012.