Emirates Airlines said this week it will upgrade its Amsterdam service to an A380 from August following an exponential growth since launching passenger flights to the Netherlands in May 2010.The airline said in a statement issued in Nairobi that the new route, via Dubai, has been operated with a combination of Boeing 777-300ER and 777-200LR aircraft, arranged in a three-class configuration.

"To upgrade from a 777 operation to an A380 in a relatively short space of time demonstrates the strong demand from travellers to fly with Emirates and experience our superior products and services,” said Essa Sulaiman Ahmad, Emirates regional manager for East Africa.The new route is expected to boost Kenya’s flower export to the Netherlands, which is a crucial market for flower exporters considering that consignments are re-exported to countries as far as Japan and the United States, thus giving flower farmers market diversity out of their European stronghold.

Emirates SkyCargo is already transporting 1,000 tonnes of flowers monthly and the airline plans to use the extra belly capacity generated by the daily passenger flight to transport an additional 400 tones of cargo per month.

"Kenya is the largest supplier of cut flowers to the European Union, representing 31 percent of their imports, out of which nearly 70 percent go to the Netherlands, which dominates the trade in cut flowers worldwide through its auction halls in Amsterdam.

Already, we lift a good deal of cargo loads out of Nairobi, ranging from cut flowers to meat products, vegetable and fruits,” Ahmad said.Kenya’s major exports to the Netherlands include horticultural products, flowers, tobacco and other raw materials while imports from the Netherlands is include chemicals products, machinery, transport equipment and engines.

"The combination of introducing our largest passenger aircraft onto the route when we already have such an established cargo track record is a formidable partnership, which will benefit tourism and trade between Kenya and the Netherlands,” Ahmad added.