Jame Hogan, chief executive officer of Etihad Airways. [China Daily]
BEIJING - Etihad Airways, the flag carrier of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), plans to expand its Abu Dhabi to Beijing service to seven days a week this year and begin non-stop flights to Shanghai in 2011 or 2012, a top executive from the airline said on Tuesday.
Increasing demand from the Chinese market is the main reason for the company to increase flight frequency and open more routes, said James Hogan, chief executive officer of the company.
Etihad Airways started operating its first Abu Dhabi to Beijing flights in China in March 2008, flying weekly at that time. Currently the airline plies the route five days a week.
"We are operating with an 81 percent capacity (on flights between Beijing and Abu Dhabi), and that's why we are planning to go daily," said Hogan. But the new service is still pending approval from the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
The Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority has made the Chinese market a priority to stimulate its tourism after the global economic downturn, after its core tourism market of Western Europe was hit by the economic crisis.
"(Abu Dhabi) is also a destination for Chinese to go shopping and traveling. We already saw Chinese outbound tourists come to Abu Dhabi, and the market offers a fantastic opportunity for us," said Hogan.
Tang Hoe Kun, Etihad Airways' China manager, said that of all Chinese passengers traveling with the airline, only 30 percent head to Abu Dhabi as the destination while the rest 70 percent utilize the airport as a transit point, mainly to European countries.
Middle Eastern carriers in 2009 witnessed the fastest growth in passenger traffic, up 11.2 percent year-on-year, in comparison with the 3.5 percent traffic decline in global passenger demand, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) which represents some 230 airlines and 93 percent of scheduled international air traffic, due to their increasing share of long-haul connecting traffic over their hubs.
A report released by the China Tourism Academy (CTA) also shows that as one of the largest sources of outbound tourists, about 47 million Chinese traveled to almost every corner of the world in 2009, which estimates that volume to reach 54 million this year. Europe is one of the most popular destinations, according to an AC Nielson survey.
Etihad Airways has posted an 11 percent increase in passenger volume on a year-to-year basis for the first quarter. Hogan said in conjunction with TT Services, a visa service provider, the airways recently launched an online visa application service to assist Chinese passengers traveling to Abu Dhabi.
Etihad Airways carried 6.3 million passengers in 2009, up 5 percent from a year earlier, in comparison with 340,000 passengers in its first year of operations in 2004.
However, Etihad has not posted a profit since it began operations in 2004. Hogan, nevertheless, said he believes the company has outperformed most other airlines in their early stages. He expects the airline to turn a profit in 2011.
