Emirates Airlines has announced its intention to restart flight operations at Nigerian airports beginning October 1, 2024, after a two-year hiatus from operating in the country. The airline made this announcement through its official X account on Thursday.

The flights will be conducted using a Boeing 777-300ER. EK783 will depart Dubai at 0945hrs, reaching Lagos at 1520hrs; while the return flight EK784 will leave Lagos at 1730hrs and arrive in Dubai at 0510hrs the following day. “We’re back, Nigeria! We’ll be resuming services to Lagos from 1 October 2024, and we can’t wait to offer unrivalled connectivity to Dubai and beyond to over 140 cities,” the tweet stated.

Adnan Kazim, Emirates’ Deputy President and Chief Commercial Officer, expressed, “We are excited to resume our services to Nigeria. The Lagos-Dubai service has traditionally been popular with customers in Nigeria and we hope to reconnect leisure and business travellers to Dubai and onwards to our network of over 140 destinations. We thank the Nigerian government for their partnership and support in re-establishing this route and we look forward to welcoming passengers back onboard." “With the resumption of operations to Nigeria, Emirates operates to 19 gateways in Africa with 157 flights per week from Dubai, with further reach to an additional 130 regional points in Africa through its codeshare and interline partnerships with South African Airways, Airlink, Royal Air Maroc, Tunis Air, among others.

“As a major economic hub in Africa, Nigeria and the UAE have built strong bilateral trade relations over the years, headlined by Lagos as the nation’s commercial centre. With the resumption of daily passenger flights, the airline’s cargo arm, Emirates SkyCargo, will further bolster the trade relationship by offering more than 300 tonnes of belly-hold cargo capacity, in and out of Lagos every week.” It is worth noting that Nigeria’s Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, SAN, had earlier hinted at this development.