Emirates will drop its daily Melbourne-Auckland and Brisbane-Auckland fights from March 2018; it had previously dropped its Sydney to Auckland flights in mid 2017.
The only remaining AKL flight is the non-stop A380 from Dubai; which in all reality would be better served by a long range 777-200 rather than the often payload restricted double decker.
Qantas will fill the gap by adding seven new return flights per week between Melbourne and Auckland and an extra two return flights per week between Brisbane and Auckland, with some of these moving from a Boeing 737 onto the larger and more comfortable Airbus A330.
Still, this is a far cry from the Emirates A380.
Emirates retains its daily Dubai-Sydney-Christchurch Airbus A380 as its only trans-Tasman service and plans to reschedule its Australia flights “to create a better spread of departure times throughout the day.” Or in reality to avoid having airliners sitting on the ground in Brisbane and Melbourne for 12+ hours.
Bad news for anyone wanting to cross the Tasman in reasonable comfort and for frequent flyers on mileage runs. And very bad news for anyone who wanted cheap seats across the Tasman. In the last year Emirates has basically removed 1,500 seats each day, each way. A few Qantas 737s will not replace that.