Emirates is celebrating 10 years in Canada, during which time it has carried over 1.2 million passengers between Dubai and Toronto.

In Canada, Emirates’ established codeshare partnerships with WestJet and Alaska Airlines enableit to connect travellers from across its global network to more Canadian cities, and vice versa.

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The airline claims that hitting the 10 year milestone in Canada shows Emirates’ continued commitment to its operations in the country.

“We’re proud to be celebrating 10 years of operations in Canada,” says Hubert Frach, divisional senior vice president for commercial operations west at Emirates.

“We started with a Boeing 777 aircraft flying three times a week. By June 2009, we had started operating with the Airbus A380 and increased our passenger capacity by 40 per cent across Canada, which illustrates the strong demand from customers and the market.”

Emirates’ three flights per week between Toronto and Dubai is the maximum permitted frequency in the Air Transport Agreement negotiated between Canada and the United Arab Emirates in 1999.

To date, Emirates’ entitlement and frequency of service remains unchanged, while trade between the two countries has increased significantly.

Since 2009 and the upgrade to the A380, passenger occupancy on Emirates’ Toronto service has been consistently full, averaging 90%, with demand outstripping supply.

The majority of Canadian passengers are travelling to Dubai, the Middle East and the South Asia subcontinent, with leisure traffic to the Maldives and Mauritius.

Emirates is currently the only airline operating the A380 out of Toronto.

Frach notes: “Over the past decade we’ve witnessed an increasing interest in Dubai. In the latest seat sale results, Dubai was the top destination sold in Canada."