In October, Emirates returned to St. Petersburg Pulkovo airport after it had stopped directly flying in here from Dubai (the UAE) in March 2020 with seven flights a week performed by Boeing 777-300ER.
Till October 17, 2021, there are four flights a week, on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. As of October 21, 2021, flights will be daily.
The return of the service is critical to the restoration of tourism in St. Petersburg as Dubai is a stopover for tourists heading to Russia’s Northern capital from more than 120 destinations across the globe.
In 2019, Emirates served 165,000 travelers on the route.
This Emirates flight is notable as it will offer three classes of service for the first time: economy, business, and first (premium). Beforehand, there were only the economy and business classes.
A regular round trip fare in October is from 33,700 rubles (luggage of 25 kg included) for the economy class, from 207,000 rubles for the business, and 532,842 for the first class, a media outlet of the Russian Tour Operators Association reported.
Earlier, Emirates resumed service between Dubai and Moscow’s airport Domodedovo, also seven flights a week.
Throughout this year, many air carriers have returned to Pulkovo. A list of cities connected by direct flights with St. Petersburg includes Helsinki (Finland), Prague (Czech Republic), Budapest (Hungary), Doha (Qatar), Nur-Sultan (Qazaqstan), Varna (Bulgaria), Skopje (Northern Macedonia), Minsk (Belarus) and some others.
During the first nine months of 2021, Pulkovo’s traffic was 13.5 million passengers, 11 percent down from the corresponding period of 2019.
There is other good news of tourism restoration as coach operators are trying to get their buses back on routes to St. Petersburg from Tallinn, Helsinki, and other European capitals.