Etihad announced 10 new destinations that will be introduced next year connecting Abu Dhabi with major Asia Pacific cities.
The new destinations that will be introduced starting July 2025 onwards, include Atlanta, Taipei, Medan, Phnom Penh, Krabi, Tunis, Chiang Mai, Hong Kong, Hanoi and Algiers.
The new locations were selected due to the growing number of tourists and people from these countries in the UAE and the region, making Etihad the sole non-stop airway for them.
“For a lot of these cities, ours will be the only non-stop flight from the UAE. So if you want to go to Medan (in North Sumatra), there will be no other flights outside of Abu Dhabi,” said Arik De Chief, Revenue and Commercial Officer at Etihad.
A lot of the flights have been optimised to connect to Europe. “If you want to go from Hanoi (Vietnam) to Paris, there is a lot of French influence in Vietnam. Etihad has the fastest connectivity than any other airlines in the region. So, we’ve put a lot of focus on the route network from Asia,” he added.
Furthermore, introducing flights to Tunisian and Algerian capitals will benefit tens of thousands of residents from these countries.
“We are very excited about Tunis and Algieris. In Abu Dhabi itself there are over 25,000 Algerians and around 47,000 Tunisians, who mostly travel by Qatar Airways to go home. They now have a faster way to get there.”
Three weekly flights will launch to Tunis on November 1, followed by four weekly flights to Algiers on November 7.
Another ‘big destination’ will be the four weekly flights to Atlanta starting July 2.
“We are very committed to being on the Northern seaboard and Atlanta is a major American city – and again no other non-stop flights exist from the UAE, so we are a little bold in taking out competition.”
Atlanta will be the fifth US destination that Etihad fly directly to after New York, Washington, Chicago and more recently Boston.
Etihad forecasts 2025 to be the ‘biggest year in Etihad’s history’, expecting to carry more than double the 10 million passengers it carried last year, to over 90 destinations compared to 64 in 2022.
“We have 95 planes today and 18 to 19 million passengers and we will get go 115 operating planes next year,” said its chief executive Antonaldo Neves.
“We are bigger than ever before. Now, with 95 planes, the airline is sustainably making profits, going up by 6 percent year on year.”
The airline is widely investing in European flights. “This year we added 40 per cent flying capacity into Europe, and next year we will add around 36 per cent.”
Pointing to their destinations map, he said: “Around a year and half back we only had one flight a day to Heathrow.”
Now the map includes two daily flights to most major European cities: Moscow, Dublin, London, Brussels, Munich, Frankfurt , Paris, Geneva, Zurich, Milan, Rome, Barcelona Athens and Madrid.
“That growth enables us to unlock this Eastern network.”
