Due to escalating demand, the airline will be now expanding its services to Sydney and Melbourne, two critical Australian cities.

In addition, the airline has revealed plans to increase frequency to Hong Kong and relaunch its flagship A380 in Casablanca, Morocco.

Ahead of the Chinese New Lunar Year and its resultant high demand for travel, Emirates would also ramp up its China operations.

From March 26 2023, there will be two to three daily services between Melbourne and Emirates’ Dubai hub via Singapore; with a third direct service to Sydney slated to begin from May 1. The service increase follows the airline’s recent announcement about doubling its daily flights to Brisbane from June 1. The two services will operate on a three-class Boeing-777 300ER.

By mid-2023, Emirates will be operating 63 weekly services to Australia with the capacity to transport more than 55,000 passengers per week to and from its major cities.

Emirates has been serving Australia for more than 25 years. Australia said in July 2022 that it would no longer need travellers to produce proof of immunization. But as of January 5 2023, the government mandates that travellers from China, including those from Hong Kong and Macau, provide evidence of a COVID-19 test result that was negative before departure.

Meanwhile, Emirates also took a step closer to its first flight using sustainable aviation fuel after successfully completing ground engine testing.

One of the GE90 engines on a Boeing 777-300ER used 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) while the other ran on regular fuel as the airline analysed if the engine can run on specially blended 100% SAF without affecting its performance, requiring no modifications to the aircraft systems, or special maintenance procedures on the aircraft or the engine. SAF reduces carbon emissions over the fuel’s life cycle by up to 80%.

The test results will now pave the way for the airline’s first experimental test flight using 100% SAF in one engine in January 2023. The testing of two engines running on two types of fuel will help better analyse the fuel system’s behaviour and performance under each type, apart from comparing specific outputs of each engine and ensuring seamless operation of the aircraft’s engine and airframe fuel systems during the planned test flight.

In 2022, Emirates, GE Aerospace and Boeing signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to develop a programme for conducting a test flight using 100% SAF on an Emirates 777-300ER powered by GE90 engines.

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The report states that home ownership rates among Australians younger than 65 is falling, especially those with lower incomes. Owning a home increasingly depends on who your parents are – a big change from 35 years ago when home ownership rates were high for all levels of income. Those on low incomes – increasingly renters – are spending more of their income on housing, added the findings.

In addition, the report recommends that state governments should fix planning rules to allow more homes be built in inner and middle-ring suburbs of larger cities. More small-scale urban infill projects should be allowed without council planning approval and state governments should allow denser development along key transport corridors, as these measures will improve chances of housing affordability. Other steps recommended by the report include reducing capital gains tax discount to 25%, abolishing negative gearing and including owner-occupied housing in Age Pension assets test.

Development in middle suburbs has increased in recent years, especially in Sydney. But today’s record level of housing construction is the bare minimum needed to meet record levels of population growth driven by rapid migration. Meanwhile a decade of accumulated shortages are forcing younger people to set up their own homes later in life.

“The politics of reform are fraught because most voters own a home or an investment property, and mistrust any change that might dent the price of their assets. But if governments keep pretending there are easy answers, housing affordability will just get worse. Older people will not be able to downsize in the suburb where they live, and our children won’t be able to buy their own home.”

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