KEY POINTS:
From next Monday Emirates Airline's latest plane will make its super-size presence in Auckland.
The airline's Airbus A380 - the biggest passenger plane in the world - begins a three times a week service to Sydney.
Because it is much larger than Emirates' existing planes an extra 1200
seats a week will be added to the hotly-contested Tasman route.
Emirates plans to build the A380 trantasman service to once daily out of Auckland when it has sufficient aircraft.
The airline's senior vice-president for East Asia and Australasia, Richard Vaughan, said an expansion of the network to include Melbourne and Brisbane would also be investigated if there was sufficient demand.
"We're not putting it on for the sake of putting it on."
Vaughan said the interest in the A380 flight to Auckland from within the travel industry had been tremendous.
Publicity around the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series had given the service a boost, given Emirates' sponsorship of Team New Zealand.
The A380 was developed primarily to fly more passengers into crowded European airports with fewer flights but has been developed by airlines to showcase luxury extras.
Emirates' long haul A380s have showers for first class passengers, a bar and 14 per cent more floor area than a Boeing 747 after taking into account the extra seats.
The planes are claimed to be 20 per cent more fuel-efficient than 747s. Emirates has been flying A380s since last August and despite an early electrical fault they had met the airline's expectations.
"We're delighted with the aircraft. Like all new equipment coming in there are small snags but nothing we wouldn't expect."
Vaughan said the airline was committed strongly to the region.
Visitor arrivals from the Middle East rose 10 per cent to just under 20,000 to October last year .
He said there were projections of an 8 per cent increase despite tougher times now being felt in the previously unstoppable United Arab Emirates and the wider region.
"There's a fair bit of foreign exchange [benefit] coming in and New Zealand is good value," he said.
"It's a long hard slog from here but we're getting there and committed to bringing more long-haul traffic into New Zealand as well as passengers from Australia."
The airline is 24 years old and has been on a fast track up the airline rankings to lie fifth by passenger kilometres carried.
There is consolidation looming this year even though the airline has work for 17 wide-body planes it will take delivery of this year.
"There are some routes that are struggling. There'll be consolidation on some routes we currently operate and not many new if any new routes but we do need this extra capacity."
Competitors have accused Emirates of "dumping" cheap fares on the Tasman.
"We react to market conditions - we don't go in there to destroy any market our competitors have, we just react and ensure we're competitive," Vaughan said.
Auckland Airport has widened its runway to allow for the outer engine pod, widened taxiways, modified parking aprons specifically for the A380 and built a new pier to accommodate that aircraft and other makes.
BIG PLAYER
Emirates has 58 A380s on order.
* Length: 73m.
* Wingspan: 79.8m.
* Height: 24.1m.
* Weight: 560 tonnes.
* Up to 14 first class passengers can enjoy five-minute showers. The extra water adds about half a tonne of weight in the aircraft.
