Etihad expands India ops

Etihad Airways on Monday announced plans to increase services from India and develop Abu Dhabi as a hub for international traffic originating out of the country.

Recently, the Union government approved trebling of capacity between India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the next three years and Etihad’s Rs 2,058-crore deal to pick up a 24 per cent stake in Naresh Goyal’s Jet Airways.

Etihad has doubled its flights to Mumbai and Delhi with immediate effect. It would use the 292-seater Airbus A340 and 254-seater Airbus A330 for evening flights from Mumbai and Delhi, respectively. The Mumbai flights would have three classes, including 12 first-class seats. With this, the number of seats from Delhi and Mumbai would treble to 2,996 and 2,730 a week, respectively.

The airline has said it would double flights to 14 a week from Kochi (from June), Bangalore, Chennai (from July) and Hyderabad (from October) next year. The airline will deploy a 174-seater Airbus A321 to Kochi and Chennai instead of the 136-seater Airbus A320 that it flies on from these cities now.

Subject to approvals, the two airlines will codeshare on each other’s flights among Abu Dhabi, India, Africa, West Asia and North America. They also plan to codeshare on Jet’s new flights to the US via the Abu Dhabi hub.

The two airlines will also join forces to reduce costs. “Our equity alliance enables much deeper cooperation than can be achieved through a standard commercial partnership,” said James Hogan, president and chief executive officer, Etihad Airways. “In addition to joint activities which increase revenue, the relationships we have with our equity partners enable us to reduce costs and increase efficiencies through activities such as resource sharing, knowledge transfer and joint procurement.”

In addition to Jet Airways, Etihad has invested in Air Berlin (29 per cent), Air Seychelles (40 per cent), Virgin Australia (19.9 per cent) and Aer Lingus (3 per cent). Etihad Airways is also awaiting approval to acquire 33.3 per cent in Swiss regional carrier Darwin Airline and in January will activate a 49 per cent investment in Air Serbia.

Etihad & Jet are exploring synergies ranging from integration of loyalty programmes to shared airport facilities & offices, common training of pilots & flight attendants and deployment of joint sales forces in markets served by both carriers.

Jet Airways is yet to announce its expansion plans. However, sources said Jet was likely to connect cities, including Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, to Abu Dhabi soon but is unlikely to open new routes beyond the hub this winter.