Emirates' endless A350 saga, debut from Bologna slips for 4th time

On January 10, Emirates, in a press release in which he announced the entry into service of the first A350 On the route from Dubai to Scotland confirmed the debut in Bologna during March, too bad that these hours have brought a cold shower to all those, including me, who were hoping to try EK's new machine.

The official announcement of the program change

"Emirates' planned Airbus A350 services to Bologna, Lyon and Muscat have been postponed until July 1, 2025 due to delays in aircraft delivery. Flight frequencies to the destinations will remain unchanged, and will be served with the company's Boeing 777 until we are able to deploy the new aircraft."

As can be seen, it is not only Bologna that is affected, but a number of the destinations where the Dubai-based carrier had planned to fly these new planes. This is the 4th program change for Bologna. 

No communication from Emirates on machine change

As a passenger booked on a flight that is the subject of the change, I have not received any official communication from Emirates, but today a reader wrote to me pointing this out. The first thing I did was go and check my reservation.

In my personal area everything is still normal, the machine indicated is indeed the new A350/900 and the same is evident from the seat map and all other booking info.

Too bad that by doing the same search as a new reservation things are very different, here we can already see the return to the past, that is, to the 777/300, the one set up in 4 classes, but also featuring the old business class.

I will not be able to be on board on the day of the debut

If the July 1 date is confirmed, I will not be able to be on board that flight since I will be in Riga that week with Marika and Bete.

I bought the ticket, using Skywards points, in May 2024 luckily it was a Flex rate and that allows me to move and cancel whenever I want, but I have to say that the situation is really paradoxical even in light of the short notice, what could have changed in less than two weeks?

For now I have changed the flight to July 1, then we will see what happens to this ticket.

In conclusion

Let's just say that this umpteenth change of plans is really a bad situation, after the January 10 confirmation I thought there was no more doubt about it, but fortunately I had waited to make other plans since as usual I build my itineraries around these particular tickets, I would have really hated to throw away money and miles only to find myself flying on the worst machine in service at Emirates.