Etihad Airways Drops LAX Route

Interestingly the AUH to JNB route is also not showing on the destination map anymore. They are still selling tickets for it though and I have a ticket booked through Aeroplan for November. Will be interesting to see if they will drop it too and how Aeroplan will try to reroute me?

If the hub and spoke model was starting to fade into oblivion before corona then surely it's going to be all but dead here soon. Even with minimal international travel i see travelers spending more money and effort ensuring they will not have to connect.

What a shame, Etihad really is streamlining, I wonder if US Pre Clearance is viable at AUH now with only 3 US destinations ( ORD, JFK, IAD )

Would be super disappointing if not for the fact that last time I took that flight, my wife was offered a crew member’s nearly-flattened sandwich because they’d run out of food.

Not surprised at all. The planes were half empty even before the pandemic.

It is sad watching the slow undoing of an airline that, at its best, was a true pleasure to fly.

Good point. I am a big fan of US Pre-Clearance but it is hard to imagine this cost is justified with a sizably diminished network, and reduced capacity (smaller aircraft) within the surviving network.

Etihad’s apartment will go down in aviation history as one of the most innovative F cabinet. I can see years from now, people reminiscing about it. After international flights normalized, maybe it’s time to rerank F cabinets again?

Im sure gonna miss seeing these flights come into los angeles and dispatching buses to handle the flight

This is what happens when management chases market share and ignore the cost of operating one of the longest routes in their network, benchmarking carriers who are flying over the pacific and matching their lowest price shows the incompetence of the people managing the airline.

Pre-clearance is such a bother and only works if a large percentage of an airport's international destinations is to the United States as it is in Canadian airports with such facilities. Otherwise, its a waste of real estate on an airport. That being said, I think closing the pre-clearance facility in AUH and setting one up in DXB or maybe long term DWC (assuming EK ever makes the move there) would be something worth exploring.

Not at all surprising but LAX is a major route. Etihad is shrinking down to a level where it will likely be absorbed by one of the ME3 in the next 3-5 years.

I think Etihad should completely drop all USA routes and let Qatar handle the show. Good riddance.

Shannon is still hanging in there with pre-clearance. No transatlantics since pre-Covid and likely only BOS and NYC and possibly PHL narrowbodies when it returns.

Etihad will become Gulf Air 2.0., small and in the big scheme of things irrelevant. If Etihad was serious about profitability it would stop the US operations alltogether, the costs to operate them are high compared to European routes (think about crew cost, and the cost of carrying the fuel needed to get over the Atlantic), and Etihad’s fares on these routes are too low to be profitable.
But unfortunately they are just not very good at what they are doing. So expect little cuts here, little cuts there, until they reached Gulf Air’s level of operation.

So does that mean TBIT will no longer have pre-cleared arrivals?

"Etihad’s apartment will go down in aviation history as one of the most innovative F cabinet. "

I believe "money-losing" was misspelled as "innovative" here.... as cool as they were to see, there's no way that that laughable use of space was revenue-positive.

If some reports are to be believed, Etihad's median fare for those was less than $6500 in 2018; British Airways was getting more than that in some of their tertiary US markets (Austin, New Orleans, Nashville) while using the arguably worst premium seat in the industry.

Aer Lingus's flights are pre-cleared.

Top heads mismanaged Gulf Air and now Etihad is a victim. A Good airline shrinking it’s network and painful to see a prestigious station closing down.

Merge with Emirates; problem solved.

I have travelled long haul from the US many times on Etihad from 2015 to 2018 that’s when I decided to never travel on it again.
It went from really fabulous in 2015 to downright cheap real quick by 2018.
When I travelled on it the last time even the seat were hard and not comfortable at all. The quality of food had dropped really low and traveling long haul its the food that makes all the difference. The food was so worse that on my last flight home from Abu Dhabi I totally refused to eat anything on flight and just decided I would eat when I get home.
Also some places at the Abu Dhabi airport were getting so cramped that the distance of other people from you was maybe less than 6 inches.
Having all that worse experience I said bye to this Airline for good.

I suggest that Etihad Airways could use their A380 on ultra long haul routes such as LAX, SFO, MEL, JFK. Such destinations have premium market demand. So please rethink before retiring the A380. Instead of having the Residence, they can just First Class Apartment, Business Studios, they can add Premium Economy in A380 and of course at last the Economy Class.

I love the pre clearance. Was there earlier this year. I hope they don't cut it. EY AUH-LAX was awesome. After 17 hours, you exit the terminal as if it’s a domestic flight