In late 2023, Air France-KLM and Etihad announced plans to expand their partnership. This included frequent flyer reciprocity, an expanded codeshare agreement, and Air France even launching flights to Abu Dhabi. Well, this is now at least being partly scaled back…
Air France ending flights to Abu Dhabi as of October 2024
As flagged by AeroRoutes, Air France will soon be discontinuing its Paris (CDG) to Abu Dhabi (AUH) route, almost exactly a year after it launched. Specifically, the service has operated daily with the following schedule, and will be discontinued as of October 27, 2024:
AF638 Paris to Abu Dhabi departing 9:55PM arriving 7:35AM (+1 day)
AF639 Abu Dhabi to Paris departing 9:45AM arriving 2:15PM
Air France has used an Airbus A350-900 on the route, though had plans to fly a Boeing 777-300ER for this upcoming winter. KLM also flew to Abu Dhabi in the past, but no longer does.
The Paris to Abu Dhabi route continues to be served by Etihad Airways. The airline operates in the market once daily, and as of November 2024, Etihad plans to upgrade the route to an Airbus A380. As of now, there’s no indication that the partnership between Air France-KLM and Etihad will be ending.
My take on Air France cutting Abu Dhabi flights
I’m a bit surprised to see Air France abandoning Abu Dhabi after just a year, especially when this route was launched as part of a larger collaboration. For Air France, the benefit of this partnership was supposed to be the ability to get passengers to long haul destinations that the airline doesn’t directly serve. For example, passengers could fly Air France to Abu Dhabi, and then connect to places like Ho Chi Minh City, Sydney, etc.
So, what went wrong here? The way I see it, there are two most likely explanations.
One possible explanation is that this route was just performing really poorly, and Air France wasn’t seeing the traffic flows it had hoped through Abu Dhabi. Maybe passengers just weren’t booking these routings, so there was no point for Air France to keep the service around.
Another possible explanation is that maybe Air France is instead pursuing other opportunities to partner with a Gulf airline. Could we soon we Air France instead partner with Riyadh Air, and announce flights to Riyadh? Keep in mind that Riyadh Air has now announced extensive partnerships with both Delta and Virgin Atlantic. Air France-KLM is also partially owned by Delta, and the airlines have a close level of cooperation.
For a while, it seemed like more SkyTeam airlines might get a bit closer to Etihad, due to how industry dynamics were playing out. But it now seems that energy is instead going toward Riyadh Air. So it’s possible my read on the situation is wrong, but personally I’d be surprised if there wasn’t an imminent announcement about Air France adding Riyadh to its network.
Bottom line
Air France will be ending its Paris to Abu Dhabi route as of late October 2024, a year after the service was launched. Given that Air France and Etihad had plans for a larger partnership, it’s interesting to see how fast the airline threw in the towel on this service.
What do you make of Air France cutting Abu Dhabi flights?
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