Emirates Dubai-Muscat Flight Launched, Becomes World's Shortest Airbus A380 Route

The UAE-based Emirates airline has launched the world's shortest A380 flight between Dubai and Oman's capital Muscat. "The average flight time (40 minutes) between Dubai and Muscat is only five minutes more than the time taken to clean an Airbus A380 by a team of 42 people," the airline said in a series of tweets.

Interestingly, the distance between Dubai and Muscat is 340km, which is shorter than the 500km long wiring on an Airbus A380, Emirates said on its Twitter account.

Shaikh Majid Al Mualla, Divisional Senior Vice President Commercial Operations Centre, Emirates, said: "The introduction of the A380 services to Muscat means more of our customers will have the opportunity to experience our industry-leading products onboard, and will also enhance choice and travel preferences as they plan their journeys. Oman is an important destination for Emirates, and we will continue to look at ways to grow our operations in the market to best serve our customers," he said.

"Emirates has flown over 4.7 million customers between Dubai and Muscat since 1993. That's the capacity of nearly 9,000 Emirates @Airbus A380s," the airline tweeted.

The new flights broke Emirates' own record. It previously operated the world's shortest scheduled A380 service, between Dubai and Doha. However, all flights to Doha were cancelled in 2017 due to an ongoing diplomatic row between Qatar and the UAE.

The Airbus A380 is the world's largest passenger airliner, a wide-body aircraft manufactured by Airbus. Emirates was the second airline, after Singapore airline, to receive the A380 and commenced service between Dubai and New York in August 2008.