How to get to | Dubai

This is part of a series of blog entries on how to get to countries and places. Here is a link to the index. I plan to eventually cover every country and some other places. If you have a request for a particular country or place please use the email me link at top right, or leave a comment.

Dubai

Dubai in United Arab Emirates (UAE) can be reached by land from other UAE Emirates. There are also a limited number of ferries crossing the Persian Gulf to UAE. Many major airlines fly to Dubai International Airport, including home carrier Emirates which flies to 6 continents. A large new airport is under construction at time of writing. When it opens flyers will need to check which airport their flight uses. Airlines flying to Dubai include:

• Star Alliance - Air China, Austrian, EgyptAir, Lufthansa, SAS, Singapore, Swiss, Thai, Turkish, United
• Oneworld - British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, Royal Jordanian
• Sky Team - Aeroflot, Air France, China Southern, Delta, Kenya Airways, KLM, Korean
• Other (selected) - Emirates, Virgin Atlantic, most airlines from north Africa, Middle East, western Asia and Caucasus.

TIP There are a number of fifth freedom flights between Dubai and other places in the Middle East and south Asia, eg Swiss between Muscat and Dubai. These can be relatively inexpensive.

TIP It may be relatively cheaper to fly via Dubai with a stopover than to fly a simple round trip, whether on a paid ticket or an award ticket. For example Australia to Dubai is often not much less than Australia to Europe via Dubai.

TIP If visiting somewhere else in Middle East and flying on Emirates it is usually worthwhile on paid tickets to make the other place the destination with a stopover in Dubai. The cost is the same or very little extra compared with Dubai as destination. The opposite applies if flying other gulf airlines (ie if flying Gulf make Bahrain the stopover and Dubai the destination).

TIP On Star Alliance round the world tickets (which are mileage based) use a combination of Asian (eg Singapore) and European (eg Lufthansa) to visit Dubai and avoid high mileage wastage of back-tracking. On Oneworld round the world (continent based) tickets you can backtrack with British Airways (limit one visit to Middle East though). In both cases backtracking to Asia is not allowed because Middle East is in IATA TC area 2 and Asia is IATA TC area 3.