Etihad Airways has announced some positive updates to its service to North America. While we’re not seeing any new routes introduced for now, we are seeing positive changes to two existing routes.
Continue reading: Etihad Expands Boston Flights, Upgrades Toronto Flights
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Hey, Ben. I think your AUH to YYZ schedule seems to be wrong as on the Etihad website the flight departs at 2;45 AM and arrives at 8;25 AM.
@ Brylle -- You're right, thank you! I accidentally had the summer schedule in there for one direction.
Ben - just wanted to correct the math on the A350 - its actually a total of 381 seats based on 337Y and 44J. So a slight capacity upgrade.
Question: why has Etihad switched its Toronto schedule? They did this some years ago as well. Flights would depart Abu Dhabi and Toronto at 10 am and 10 pm respectively, then the schedule was advanced by 6.5 hours, then switched back, and now they will return to the early morning and afternoon departure schedule?
I must say I'm looking forward to my trip in November thanks to the equipment change. The 777 interior was just tired!
Hi Ben, two corrections for the YYZ bit
1. AUH-YYZ EY21 will depart at 0245 and arrive at 0925
2. A350 seat capacity is 44J 337Y (that's 381 seats, not 371 as written)
B777 capacity is 40J 330Y (total 370)
So YYZ is gaining 11 seats daily, not loosing 9 seats daily as published
When they introduced Boston to Abu Dhabi in April, they had really attractive schedules to pick up and drop passengers between Abu Dhabi and cities in India. Landing and taking off out of India in the evening hours is a dream that we all aspired for, that no other airline did but Etihad delivered on that. It was a huge differentiator. Suddenly they have shifted their schedules to the menacing middle of the night take off and landing in Indian cities. What a let down for the Indian diaspora. It is a huge inconvenience not only for travelers but their families too.
LAX is a vanity project for a lot of airlines. Unless you have a ton of point to point, you're going to fight an uphill battle due to the competition. Delta, a North American airline, couldn't even make their own LHR route at their LAX hub.
Flying through the Middle East to connect is rarely preferable for travelers unless you're going to Africa/India.
"Flying through the Middle East to connect is rarely preferable for travelers unless you're going to Africa/India."
Uh-huh, because who'd want to connect passengers in a place that's 8 hours' flying time from nearly two-thirds of the global population.........
The problem for Middle Eastern carriers from the West Coast is that they lose competitive advantage over East Asian carriers because you can basically fly East (TATL) or West (TPAC) to India and it is relatively the same distance. Yes, you do get more availability to secondary/tertiary cities with the ME3, but to DEL, BOM (and even BLR), you have one stop options from the West Coast flying via East Asia (and non-stop options on AI from SFO). The longer the flight, the more expensive it is to operate. That being said, would love to have EY back on the West Coast. EK and QR (amongst others) seem to make it work.
I need a flight to Seattle in USA from Abu Dhabi to be connected to Jaiipur via Abu Dhabi on its return. Seattle is a very big hub for IT and when you have recently started flight for Jaipur it will be great if I can go directly to Jaipur via Abu Dhabi from Seattle.
The upgrade to the A350 will give some tough competition to the Daily Emirates A380 flying to Toronto. I'd choose an A350 over the A380 in economy and business.