Emirates Mulls Athens To Chicago Fifth Freedom Route

Middle East giant Emirates could be on the verge of adding more fifth freedom flights to North America. Hot on the heels of its Barcelona-Mexico City route launch, the carrier is reportedly considering adding flights to Chicago from Athens. But with Athens already on a fifth freedom Emirates route,  the question has to be asked: does it really need another?

Emirates A380
Emirates is mulling a new fifth freedom US route. Photo: Getty

Emirates in Greece

Emirates is celebrating its 23rd year of operating flights to Greece. Over that period, the carrier provided transport for 3.1m passengers between Dubai and Athens, as well as one other key destination. Thanks to fifth freedom rights, Emirates has, for three years now, also been operating a flight between Athens and Newark in the US.

Local media in Greece is reporting that, for Emirates, perhaps Newark is not enough. Emirates’ Director for Greece and Albania Khalid Al Zarooni is quoted by the publication as saying,

“Athens is an important destination for Emirates because of its strong tourism, culture and business relationships between the UAE and Greece. The Athens – New York route is a great success story for us. We want to focus on Athens.

“We plan to increase the frequencies and capacity of the flights, but this should be accompanied by bilateral agreements. In the near future, the next step for Emirates is to increase Athens – Dubai flights twice a day throughout the year, compared to the winter season.”

Emirates Athens Newark
Emirates flies the 777 between Athens and Newark. Photo: Emirates

Metaforespress goes on to state that the director said that other links, such as Athens to Chicago, were also being considered. One Mile At A Time highlighted the news, noting that American Airlines launched a service to Athens last year, which is likely to have been successful as it’s appearing on the schedules for summer 2020 too.

Emirates’ fifth freedom flights

Emirates is something of a fan of fifth freedom flights. Its base in Dubai makes it ideally placed to offer one stop services to a number of North American destinations, despite disapproval from the local big carriers.

Right now, Emirates operates three fifth freedom flights to North America. These are Dubai to New York via Milan, Dubai to Newark via Athens and Dubai to Mexico City via Barcelona. While the carrier has had to put up a fight to secure Mexico City, its routes to the US have been established for some time and are considered to be a success.

Emirates fifth freedom routes
Emirates has three fifth freedom flights to North America currently. Photo: GCMap

Emirates has long been keen to secure more fifth freedom flights to the US, but has faced stiff opposition from the bosses at Delta, United and American Airlines. They believe the carrier is presenting unfair competition on the lucrative transatlantic market, due to it being ‘illegally subsidized’ by the UAE government.

Outgoing CEO Tim Clark was under no illusions that he would face some roadblocks to adding fifth freedom flights to the States. Regardless, he made it clear that this was very much on the airline’s radar, no matter what Ed Bastian had to say about it.

Will this route happen?

While it’s interesting to see what Greek media has to say about this route, the likelihood of it happening is probably quite slim. Another fifth freedom routed through Athens would add an inordinate amount of traffic on the DXB-ATH portion of the route, unless of course Emirates choose to add Chicago as an alternative to Newark on certain days of the week, with the same equipment.

Emirates, Fifth Freedom, Penang
Emirates is considering many options. Photo: Emirates

Emirates often talks about ‘considering’ new routes, and enjoys prodding the US carriers with threats of new services. However, to date only the Mexico City route has been pursued with any vigor. With Chicago’s ties to Italy, it would make more sense for the carrier to look at a fifth freedom via Milan or even Rome rather than adding more capacity through the already crowded airport at Athens.

What do you think? Will Emirates add more fifth freedom routes to the US? Or is this latest titbit just a lot of hot air?

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