Emirates to resume Dubai to Venice flights from July 1

Airline will initially offer three flights a week on popular route

 An Emirates plane tales off from Dubai International Airport. Reuters

Emirates announced on Monday that flights between Dubai and Venice will resume from July 1.

Although the airline will initially only put on three flights a week, the enhanced connectivity will boost trade and tourism between the UAE and Italy.

Services to Milan will also be increased from eight to 10 weekly flights in July, including a daily service on the Dubai-Milan-New York JFK route, and three-weekly return flights between Dubai and Milan.

Together with Emirates' five weekly flights to Rome and three to Bologna, the airline's total services to Italy from July will be 21 weekly flights to four cities.

All Italian routes will be flown with the modern and comfortable wide-body Boeing 777-300ER aircraft.

Emirates' expansion of flight services follows the start of a Covid testing arrangement between the UAE and Italy, which comes into effect on June 2.

Emirates customers travelling to Italy are required to hold a negative Covid PCR test or rapid antigen test result valid for 48 hours before departure.

Travellers must also take a rapid antigen swab test on arrival in Italy, at their own cost.

"We welcome the Covid-tested flight arrangements and would like to thank the Italian and UAE authorities for their ongoing efforts to ease and facilitate international travel," said Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed, chairman and chief executive of Emirates airline.

"The UAE has a strong and longstanding relationship with Italy and the safe return of air connectivity will help boost mutual trade and tourism.

"As a global commercial hub, and home to people from more than 200 nations, Dubai and the UAE have spared no effort to keep communities safe from the pandemic, from our world-leading vaccination programme to our bio-safety protocols across all sectors.

"We hope that more countries will consider similar arrangements to facilitate quarantine-free travel."