Etihad Airbus A380 Returns To Paris As Of November 2024!

@Ben I’ve got a flight booked from LHR-AUH in November and last week it was switched to a B787 and I see the other daily flight is also a B787 when I checked it was like that through February with no A380 scheduled.

They reduced London from double daily to daily to accommodate Paris but in the future I expect them to activate at least 3 more A380 within a year or so
Probably will send one daily to Sydney and a second daily to London.

Looks like the second daily rotation is an A380

First LHR. Then JFK. Now CDG. This is excellent news. Hoping for restoration of service to LAX as well but not holding my breath.

It's so good to see EY bring its A380 back to more markets, I imagine they must be activating more of them to serve this route? According to their website, from March 2025 they have the A380 on LHR 3x daily, CDG 1x daily and JFK 1x daily. That must surely take 6 A380s to service?
Who knows, perhaps we will be lucky and see the remaining 4 come back online soon and have the A380 service some other pre-pandemic destinations. It would be wonderful to have them back on flights to Australia instead of the awful and outdated 777s they're flinging on those 14 hour treks...

They are bringing back a total 7 A380s.

It's 4:50pm in Germany on 24.04.2024 and I couldn't check the price of F from SIN to CDG. Seems the team of EY didn't prepare well for this announcement. Hope they will release the price few days later.

This is amazing! Though one would think that EY would start the A380 on the CDG route in the summer because of the Olympics.

Odd that CDG is coming before Sydney to me and also shows how EY is no longer really interested in chasing connecting traffic to compete with EK and QR. Being able to offer LHR-AUH-SYD or JFK-AUH-SYD all in F (or A380 J) is how Etihad would actually be able to sell these cabins for cash but instead now the target appears to be chasing wealthy Emiratis flying to Europe / New York and back instead.

Now I know why my 8am A380 F booking in January got converted to a 787-10! Thankfully was able to rebook onto another A380 flight, but was a bit of a panic when i first saw the email

I'm betting that Sydney will be restored to the schedule early in 2025.

Remember that EY and AFKL are getting closer, so it's possible that there will be feed to/from AF at CDG. Could we see EY move to 2E (and would they become the first partner with La Premiere lounge access)?

AF is also cutting service to Chennai around this time.

It wouldn't seem that surprising to see Etihad join SkyTeam, though the "gray rhino" there would be a three-fer: EY, LY, and RX joining SkyTeam (with the Saudis joining the Abraham Accords (an Emirati/Saudi/Israeli security alliance), this isn't that farfetched). You could also read Etihad resuming A380 service to JFK T4 as groundwork for this. Pure rank speculation, but the pieces are there: AF likes EY, DL likes LY, but adding either to the alliance practically needs SV approval (at least tacitly) and adding RX could get MbS on-side.