EMIRATES has denied online rumours it is considering cancelling or scaling down its daily service between Cape Town and Dubai because the route is not profitable. “That is not true at all. We definitely are not planning to cancel the service,” said Anja Meadon, Emirates’ sales manager for the Cape. She said Emirates’ new senior vp for Africa, West Asia and India, Salem Obaidalla, had visited Cape Town recently and had given his assurances that the airline would continue to operate daily frequencies to Cape Town. She also pointed out that as official carrier for the Fifa World Cup 2010, Emirates had an agreement with Fifa to service certain destinations in South Africa, and Cape Town was one of them. In addition, the UAE was investing heavily in South Africa and in Cape Town particularly, while both countries maintained close political and trade relations. However, Meadon acknowledged the route had not performed as well as expected. She believed this was due to many cancellations received because of the xenophobic violence that had plagued South Africa earlier this year and which had been widely reported in the UAE. Bookings were expected to pick up again as the political situation stabilised and was reported positively in the UAE, she said. “We’re convinced the route will perform 100% better next year,” she said. Meanwhile, she added, Emirates’ Dubai-Durban service was “definitely back on the cards for 2009” after its December 1, 2008 launch was deferred because of lack of equipment and schedule changes linked to the late delivery of Emirates’ new A380 aircraft on the Los Angeles and San Francisco routes.