Emirates scraps Melbourne-Singapore route from March 2025 after 28 years in action

A major airline will cease flights on a route from Australia in March after 28 years.

Emirates will axe its flights between Singapore and Melbourne from March 30, 2025.

News the airline was scrapping the route after 28 years emerged in September but a date had not been revealed.

The airline will instead introduce a third non-stop service from Melbourne to Dubai from March 30.

Emirates has said affected customers holding bookings on the Singapore-Melbourne route will be offered alternative travel arrangements or a full refund.

Qantas customers who have booked flights operated by Emirates will be affected. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

Some Australians worry it will throw their travel plans into chaos.

Melbourne woman Chelsea Carden is due to fly business class from Melbourne to Singapore with Emirates and then Singapore to Paris with Air France for her honeymoon in June. The flights were purchased using Qantas points, which she had saved up for years.

“I can’t believe they haven’t told us anything yet,” she told news.com.au on Monday afternoon.

“I will now have to find a new flight to get to Singapore for our flight to Paris.”

She said she had immediately looked up other flights available to buy with Qantas points but found they were “so expensive”.

Qantas told news.com.au it was working through contacting its customers to discuss alternative travel options or a refund as soon as possible after Emirates made the announcement on Monday afternoon.

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Emirates’ third daily flight from Melbourne to Dubai will be on the retrofitted Boeing 777 with the popular premium economy cabin. Picture: Supplied

Emirates’ third Melbourne-Dubai service

Emirates currently operates two non-stop daily flights between Dubai and Melbourne using its Airbus A380s.

This will become three daily flights, with the addition of a refurbished Boeing 777 on the route from March 30.

That aircraft also has Emirates’ popular premium economy cabin (it has been ranked the best in the world). It will mean the airline will offer 3472 weekly premium economy seats across Melbourne and Sydney.

Emirates’ flight EK404 will depart from Dubai at 9.15pm, arriving in Melbourne at 5.40pm the following day. The return EK405 will depart Melbourne at 11.55pm and arrives in Dubai at 7am the next day. All times are local.

In addition to 24 premium economy seats, the refurbished Boeing 777 also includes eight first class suites, 40 business class seats and 256 economy seats.

The airline said the third daily non-stop flight meant customers will have “more convenient schedules and choice,” to travel to Dubai and onwards to Europe. It said there were 27 European cities with multiple daily flights including London, Paris and Frankfurt.

As for the Singapore route, Emirates currently operates Melbourne-Singapore and Singapore-Dubai with a Boeing 777-300ER aircraft.

The eight-hour route, which has been in service since 1996, has a Melbourne departure just before 2.30am. The return journey, however, operated at a more civilised time of 10.25am, having passengers into Melbourne around 7.30pm.

The Melbourne-Singapore route will cease but the airline plans to continue to operate the Singapore-Dubai service with new flights numbers.

Emirates reinstated its second Perth-Dubai service on December 1 and on October 28, reinstated its Adelaide-Dubai services.