Emirates Airlines has announced that it will upgrade one of its nine daily flights between Dubai and Doha to an Airbus A380 from 1 December 2016.

The three-class Airbus A380 will feature 429 seats in Economy Class on the main deck, 76 flat-bed seats in Business Class and 14 First Class Private Suites.

At a distance of 379 kilometres and flying time of a little over 1 hour, this service will become the world’s shortest scheduled A380 flight.

The Emirates A380 will be deployed as EK 841, which will depart Dubai at 0745hrs arriving in Doha at 0805hrs. The return flight, EK 842 will depart Doha at 0950hrs arriving in Dubai at 1200hrs.

With a total of 519 passengers (assuming a 100% load factor) and a flying time of just over 1 hour, this must be one hell of on board service for the cabin crew.

With a total of 85 Airbus A380 aircraft in operations and another 57 on order with Airbus, Does Emirates already have surplus of the super jumbos? Or is this short flight aimed at crew training and familiarization? Time will tell.