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Towards the middle of last week, Sydney Airport broke the news that Turkish Airlines is launching a new service to New South Wales (which will go non-stop in 2026), and it has now broken the news that Etihad will be adding more daily flights between Abu Dhabi and Sydney from next year.
Etihad’s Sydney service
As things stand, Etihad is operating a daily service between Abu Dhabi and Sydney using a combination 777s and 787-9 Dreamliners, and that level of service is set to be maintained through the northern hemisphere winter.
From 3 July 2025, however, Etihad will add three more flights (on Monday, Thursday, and Sunday outbound and on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday inbound) to increase the airline’s Sydney schedule to 10 flights/week.
This is what the schedule from 3 July 2025 is expected to look like (it may change):
EY450 AUH 10:40 – 06:10+1 day SYD (Mon, Tue, Thu, Sat & Sun)
EY454 AUH 22:25 – 18:10+1 day SYD (Mon, Wed, Thu, Fri & Sun)
EY451 SYD 14:25 – 23:25 AUH (Mon, Tue, Wed, Fri & Sun)
EY455 SYD 20:35 – 05:05+1 day AUH (Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri & Sat)
Flights EY454/455 are set to be operated by Etihad’s 777-300ER aircraft which feature 40 Business Class seats (the Business Studio seat) and 340 Economy Class seats.
Flights EY450/451 are set to be operated by Etihad’s 787-9 Dreamliners which feature 28 Business Class seats and 262 Economy Class seats.
Based on the currently published seat maps, it looks like these Dreamliners will not feature the airline’s newest Business Class cabin with the Collins Aerospace Elements seat (so the Business Studio seat as found on the 777 will be offered), but things can change very quickly, so it’s possible that an aircraft with the new seat will be assigned this route at some point down the line.
Quick thoughts
Aside from Etihad’s decision to maintain some scheduled reductions on its Abu Dhabi – London route deep into 2025, everything we’ve been seeing from the airline recently has involved route expansion.
Five days ago, the airline announced a double daily service to Paris to go alongside earlier announcements that Rome, Barcelona, and Milan would also be seeing double daily flights from/to Abu Dhabi in summer 2025, and seven days ago the airline announced that it will be adding two new European routes next summer and adding more flights to its Zurich route.
Interestingly, today has also seen Etihad report its traffic statistics for August 2024 and they give a little insight into how the airline has been regrouping following some poor decisions a few years ago.
In the past year, the airline has added 16 aircraft (net) and added 10 destinations (net) while maintaining a passenger load factor of 89%.
Also, it has transported over 3 million more passengers in the year to 31 August 2024 than it did in the same period last year, and that leaves me wondering what’s happened to the Etihad that wanted to be a boutique airline?!
Overall, this is clearly good news for flyers as the more successful Etihad is with its route network, the more options passengers connecting in Abu Dhabi will have and the more aircraft that Etihad has to fill, the more chance there is that we’ll see some of those highly coveted First and Business Class award seats made available at reasonable rates.
Related: Qatar Airways is the latest Gulf carrier to add more flights to Europe
Bottom line
Etihad seems to be continuing its recent run of route expansions with the news that from the middle of next year it will offer 10 weekly flights between Abu Dhabi and Sydney.
Given that this news comes on top of the announcements confirming that the airline will add at least two more European routes to its network next summer, add more flights to Zurich next summer, and operate double daily services to Paris, Rome, Milan and Barcelona next summer, is it possible that Etihad now has ambitions to be as big as it was 5 or 6 years ago?
Ziggy–
I appreciate the update! Any word yet as to whether Etihad will be adding additional cities in North America? LAX has been rumored for some time but I haven’t heard of any recent updates since Lucky at OMAAT posted about this possibility last year…
https://onemileatatime.com/news/etihad-airways-los-angeles-flights/
I haven’t heard anything, but if I was to guess (and that’s the best I can do), I would say that LAX is probably low on the airline’s priority list as (a) AUH-LAX is less likely to be profitable than a wide variety of other routes the airline could start/restart and (b) because it doesn’t look like that the airline has the aircraft to fly the route (the Dreamliners don’t have the range and it doesn’t appear to have a spare A380/A350/777 ready to operate the route).
I’d love Etihad to return to LA, but I don’t see it happening any time soon (now watch the airline make me look foolish by announcing the route next week!).