Passengers travelling to Melbourne, Australia will now have another direct flight option with Emirates announcing that flights EK408 and EK409 will begin operating as nonstop services from Dubai from 30 October 2016.

Operated by a Boeing 777-300ER, EK408 will depart Dubai at 03:00hrs and arrive in Melbourne at 23:20hrs. The return flight, EK409, will leave Melbourne at 06:00hrs and land in Dubai at 13:05hrs.

The current service from Dubai to Melbourne operates via Kuala Lumpur in both directions. These flight changes will save passengers approximately two and half hours in travel time in each direction when travelling between Dubai and Melbourne on these services.

The change to these services will provide passengers with improved one-stop connectivity when travelling from more than 150 destinations on the Emirates network to Melbourne via Dubai.

Emirates offers a total of four daily flights from Dubai to Melbourne with codeshare partner Qantas, including three services operated by an A380 aircraft and one flight on an Emirates B777-300ER.

From 30 October 2016, the four daily services will include two daily nonstop flights to Melbourne from Dubai on Emirates and one flight on Qantas as well as one daily Emirates flight to Melbourne from Dubai via Singapore.