Often, a flypast involves the latest military jet, which is gone by the time you hear its roar, leaving crowds deafened but missing out on seeing the aircraft. That didn’t happen to rugby fans in Johannesburg yesterday when an Emirates A380 leisurely flew just 500 feet above the Emirates Airline Park.
Three firsts for Emirates
On September 1, Emirates celebrated the return of its second daily service between Dubai and Johannesburg, South Africa, with a spectacular flypast over an international rugby match. Watching on from the ground were the national teams of South Africa (Springboks) and New Zealand (All Blacks) and more than 62,000 raucous fans waiting for the game to start.
Photo: Emirates
Emirates took to the skies of Johannesburg to celebrate its longstanding and continuing commitment to South Africa with the nation’s first-ever Airbus A380 flypast. Running up a triple score, the event also marked Emirates’ first-ever flypast in Africa, making it the first international airline to execute such a maneuver in the country.
Emirates is one of the world’s biggest supporters of rugby, and in South Africa that is headlined by its sponsorship of the Emirates Lions, including the naming rights for Emirates Airline park. The airline has sponsored the Rugby World Cup since 2007 and will have a prominent presence at the 2027 World Cup in Australia.
How it happened
The Airbus A380 departed Johannesburg’s O. R. Tambo International Airport (JNB) on Sunday at 16:00 and, after traveling at a speed of 140 knots, arrived above the stadium at precisely 16:58. This precision was needed as the aircraft had to arrive just as the national anthems of South Africa and New Zealand finished.
Photo: Craig Russell | Shutterstock
Making the whole flypast happen involved months of thorough and cross-functional planning between multiple stakeholders, including Emirates, the South African Civil Aviation Authority, Airports Company South Africa, Emirates pilots, Flight Operation Managers and Air Traffic Control. The teams worked across all aspects of the flight, taking into account air traffic patterns at different times of the day with different weather and wind conditions.
The A380 carried the latest Emirates signature livery, and at just 500 feet above the pitch, it saluted rugby and aviation fans. Commanding the flight was Emirates’ A380 Deputy Chief Pilot, UAE National Captain Mubarak Al Mheiri, joined by Captains Khalid Binsultan, Abdalla Al Hammadi and Richard Fiess.
Photo: ThaKlein | Shutterstock
Captain Mubarak has been an Emirates pilot for more than 19 years and has accumulated more than 7,200 hours in the A380 cockpit. He is an experienced aviator when it comes to flypasts, having commanded similar events for UAE National Day celebrations for the past four years and headlining the commercial aircraft flypast at the 2023 Dubai Air Show, among other events.
Photo: Dubai Airshow
The flypast also celebrated the return of the airline’s second A380 service on the Dubai-Johannesburg route. Emirates EK761 departs Dubai at 04:05 and lands in Johannesburg at 10:15, while the return departs JNB at 13:25 and arrives in Dubai at 23:45, opening timely onward connections to the Far East, Europe and the Middle East.
The airline has been serving the South African market for 29 years, connecting more than 20 million passengers to/from South Africa with its more than 140 destinations via Dubai. Emirates operates 42 weekly flights from Dubai to Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban, with connectivity to regional points across the country offered by its codeshare and interline partners South African Airways, Airlink, Cemair and FlySafair.