Somehow I missed this, but JonNYC flags that Denver airport is talking about their next international flight add being Emirates to Dubai.
According to the airport head, “Our next (new) direct flight will likely be Dubai with Emirates.” It was surprising to hear because,
- Emirates hasn’t made the announcement yet, they’re getting scooped.
- This was offered in comments at the Lufthansa Airbus A380 inaugural.
Sounds like he let the cat out of the bag here! And it also looks like they’re aggressively pursuing Ethiopian Airlines for one-stop service via Europe to Addis Ababa.
We are also looking at the continent of Africa, to Ethiopia, with a direct flight.
The Ethiopian service would be subsidized by the airport. And it’s more non-stop competition to Europe for Lufthansa. Add this to a lot of new Emirates capacity (and Emirates is a United partner), JonNYC points out that together this could cost Denver its Lufthansa A380:
wacky opinion alert: Watch that LH A380 go poof if this were to come to fruition.
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) May 8, 2025
Denver airport is terrible for those flying in and out of the city. It’s far from downtown. TSA is a mess. The train between concourses breaks down all the time. But it’s a good connecting airport, United Airlines has tons of feed, so most of the big long haul service adds are from United partners. Southwest is weak, and this buries them further. Plus hurdles to jump through in getting to and through the airport are less significant for ultra-long haul flying since they represent a smaller percentage of the total trip.
Ultimately it’s not clear why they’d spend big to subsidize service to Africa that isn’t non-stop, since they already have plenty of service to Africa that isn’t non-stop, including on United and Lufthansa, on Turkish which recently started Denver service, and with new Emirates service. The Ethiopian flight is described as ‘direct’ and wouldn’t be able to make it non-stop to Addis in any case.
I remain skeptical that ultra long haul on “usual routes” is economically viable (as opposed to “subsidy viable”). Who is really looking to fly Ethiopian out of Denver? I’m guessing just about nobody. And surely, from a pure profit/loss standpoint, there is no need for nonstop service to Dubai from Denver. The tiny number of people who want to travel from Denver to Dubai each day have a myriad of easy connections they could take. And the small number of passengers travelling east of Dubai from Denver already have dozens of connections through cities that themselves have actual origin/destination traffic, which would surely make such service more economically viable. It seems like there is still a lot of non-economic factors driving airline service from non-Western international flagship carriers. At least the declining cost of jet fuel will help reduce the losses such flights will incur.
Maybe Denver should actually expand its terminals and fix the security mess before adding more flights. I seriously don’t understand why nobody cares to fix or nobody is competent to fix the mess that is Denver’s airport. It’s literally the worst major airport in the US.
So LH downgrades their A380 service to B777 or A330? I think of A380 service as only making sense on super-high-traffic routes.
@Raphael — Yes, LH’s a380, 747, or a340, is probably too much capacity as-is. Like, how are they filling that thing anyway… Also, I’ll admit that this is nitpicking, but please recall that Lufthansa does not operate 777 for passengers, only cargo. So, yes, LH could and should probably downgauge from the a380 to their a330, a350, or even 787, especially with the reduced demand, and potential new competition on this and many US routes for them.
“The Ethiopian service would be subsidized by the airport. And it’s more non-stop competition to Europe for Lufthansa.”
Somewhere I missed where a flight to Ethiopia is more non-stop competition to Europe for Lufthansa, unless Ethiopia has changed continents!
@WHS As written in the article, it will be one stop in Europe to Addis Ababa since it’s too far to fly, especially with both cities being a mile high.
San Diego-based here and love the international flights out of Denver. Last year flew both TK and UA into DEN. Loved that intl arrivals is not as crazy as LAX, SFO, IAH. Only thing I don’t like is the loooong walk from Intl arrivals over the bridge to customs/immigration in the main terminal building.
Emirates makes sense as it’s a partner with UA. Same for LH and Turkish.
I love it when TK or EK follow the other so that a US airport gets both airlines to provide them service. Adding ET into the mix makes for all the more competition of relevance to my flying interests and I welcome that too.
I welcome any and all nonstop flights from Denver to Europe, Asia, or anywhere overseas. DH and I carefully strategize about where to go based on business award flight availability, and with UA so very proud of their nonstop overseas flights (DEN-NRT at 250k, for example) and LH’s looming award flight increase, ANY new competition or alternatives are welcome. It doesn’t matter to us if LH has an A380, but it does matter to us if we can get award seats on it for an amount of miles that we can realistically accumulate. TK? Already booked in October. Emirates? Never flown them, but we’d love to try—ditto Ethiopian. Let’s go!