India is The Next Big Focus For Abu Dhabi’s Etihad

Etihad Airways said its announcement of 10 new routes Monday was a testament to its recent success in India, despite no Indian destinations being added to the list. Routes included Hong Kong, Algiers, Chiang Mai, Hanoi, Krabi, Phnom Penh, Taipei Tunis, and Medan, coming into effect next year, as well as Atlanta, which Etihad highlights has a huge Indian market.

“Atlanta is one of the five fastest growing regions in the US. The Metropolitan Atlanta and wider Georgia area is significant in terms of the Indian diaspora,” said Arik De, the airline’s chief commercial officer during a media roundtable on Monday. “[It] we would be the fastest link between India and Atlanta. And with the US preclearance, that’s obviously a big advantage.”

Etihad will be operating the Airbus A350 aircraft on the new Abu Dhabi-Atlanta route.

The Abu Dhabi carrier now flies to 11 Indian cities and has recently upped its weekly Jaipur flights from four to 10. According to De, Etihad has seen 110% capacity growth in India since last year.

“We actually invested a lot in India. To give you a sense of that investment, we’ve grown capacity by 109% year-over-year. And that investment is not only in capacity,” he told media. “The commitment to India is actually one of the enablers of this announcement today. So we’re not shying away from our commitment to India. If anything, it was the prelude to being able to grow the capacity you’ve seen today.”

“We’re now the number one airline to carry people from India or to India, overlapping with both Europe and North America. In any of the markets where we fly, we actually have the number one market share position.”

As a UAE airline, Etihad, like Emirates, benefits from the large Indian population living in and visiting the country. Looking at neighboring Dubai, India continuously ranks as the emirate’s largest source market. The National newspaper reported more than 3.5 million Indians were living in the UAE last year, citing India’s minister of state for external affairs. That’s around a third of the total UAE population.

De added: “The region’s strong economic and demographic trends, including the UAE emerging as the top aspiration destination for Indian travelers, provide us with optimism and ambition for the future. If you ask Indians today what their number one aspirational destination is, they will tell you that the UAE is number one on their list by a fair margin. The economic growth and the interconnected demographic growth – all are indicators that give us optimism and ambition for the future.”

New Aircraft

Etihad will receive its first Airbus A321LR (long range) jets next year. Delays have struck the airline, but CEO Antonoaldo Neves was optimistic during the media roundtable.

“On one hand, we had some old orders that were very delayed, but in a way, we were lucky as we are ahead of other airlines trying to grow now. We were able to get some of those old orders fulfilled. While there is still pressure to secure these planes, we are in relatively good shape. There are still some delays, but we’ve embedded those into our schedule as much as possible. We remain confident we’ll be able to execute our delivery plan.”

CCO De added that any of the planes originally slated for the first half of next year have been pushed to the second half.

Journey 2030

The announcement Monday came under the banner of Etihad’s in-house transformation plan called Journey 2030 where the carrier will go from roughly 96 aircraft to around 170; with around 35 million passengers; and 125 destinations.

To achieve this, Neves said passengers can expect similar announcements every year.

“We have about 10 destinations to be added every year for the next five years. These ones today [Monday] are adding to many, many destinations we’ve added over the past few years.”

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