Etihad Airways has this week announced the handling of 1.5m passengers in May 2024, an increase from the same period last year.
The Abu Dhabi-based carrier continues to perform strongly, as we will explore in this piece.
Without further ado, let’s get into it…
The Numbers from Etihad Airways…
For May 2024, Etihad Airways handled 1.5m passengers, an increase of 400,000 passengers compared to the same period last year.
Year to date totals right now stand at 7.2m passengers, which is two million passengers higher than in YTD 2023.
Load factors remain steady in the 84-85% area, despite growing their fleet by 15 aircraft to 90 in the last 12 months.
So in-all, Etihad Airways have performed strongly.
It was an eventful May for the airline, noting some milestones.
They signed an interlining partnership with the following five airlines:
- Kam Air.
- SKY express.
- Rex Airlines.
- Jeju Air.
- Myanmar Airways International.
On top of this, they posted a record profit for the first-quarter of this year, due to their notable rise in passenger numbers so far.
Also, they signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Royal Air Maroc to strengthen their existing relationships that they have in place.
Finally, they announced a joint venture last week with China Eastern Airlines which will take place in 2025.
Neves: A Positive Growth Trajectory…
Reaffirming the numbers from May 2024 was Antonoaldo Neves, CEO of Etihad Airways:
“We achieved a 38 per cent year-to-date increase in passengers, underscoring our strong positive growth trajectory, and our YTD passenger count has reached 7.2 million, meaning we’ve already welcomed two million more passengers this year than the same period of 2023.
“This contributed to maintaining a healthy YTD load factor of 85 per cent against a considerable increase in capacity against the same period in 2023.”
“Our rolling 12-month passenger numbers, to the end of May 2024, now stand at just over 16 million.”
“Our operating fleet size has risen by 15 aircraft year-on-year to 90, helping to fuel our growth.
“In May, after intense months of activity involving teams across the airline, we brought the first of the six A321neos expected in 2024 into operation.”
“These aircraft further boost our growing network and frequencies and deliver a 20 per cent fuel burn and CO2 emissions advantage, underling our commitment to modern, more efficient aircraft.”
Overall…
In conclusion, Etihad Airways had a strong May 2024, and is having a much stronger year so far compared to last year.
We are now entering the peak of the Summer 2024 season, where the most amount of passengers are expected to be handled.
On top of this, with the new routes installed onto their network, it will be interesting to see how much of an uptick this will have.
We should be able to establish this next month when the airline releases their June 2024 statistics.
But in the meantime, let’s see how the airline’s summer performs moving forward.
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