Emirates won't withdraw from US cities

Emirates remains committed to the US market despite plans to slash 20% of its flights in the wake of tougher security and visa measures put in place under the Trump administration, the airline's president said Thursday. In his first interview since announcing the cutbacks, Tim Clark said that the Mideast's biggest carrier has no intention of pulling out of the 12 US cities to which it currently flies. He said the decision to cut flights to five cities was a temporary response to a drop in demand, and does not signal a desire by Emirates to halt its expansion in the world's largest aviation market. "This is not a permanent arrangement. ... I do not see this as a paradigm shift," Clark said. "Obviously our plans remain in place and we are as bullish and as confident about the US markets as we have been." Emirates said Wednesday it was cutting 25 of the 126 weekly flights it operates into the US from Dubai starting next month. It blamed the move on stiffer US security measures and attempts to ban travellers from some Muslim-majority nations since President Donald Trump took office. Clark declined to detail how much of a financial hit the Dubai government-backed carrier has taken over the past three months, but he described the falloff in passenger demand as "significant." "It is not something that Emirates does lightly when it starts pulling capacity out of markets that it's spent millions of dollars developing and operating," he said. "So when it gets to this, suffice to say they are falls which cause us to make those kinds of changes." The cutbacks will mean twice daily Emirates flights to Boston, Los Angeles and Seattle will fall to once a day. Daily flights to Fort Lauderdale and Orlando will be trimmed to five per week.<br/>