United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based airlines Etihad, on Tuesday, announced its plans to add a fourth U.S. destination to its global route map by year's end and teased news about the unveiling of a "major" partner in the coming weeks.
Those comments were among the other made by Etihad CEO James Hogan in an interview encompassing a wide-array of topics with "Today in the Sky."
Hogan did the interview while in Washington D.C.,--he was at the Newseum giving a press conference about his airlines' just-launched service to Washington Dulles.
According to USA Today, the D.C. service "began Sunday, with the carrier offering one daily round-trip flight between Washington Dulles and its main hub in Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The airline flies the flight of 13-plus hours with 240-seat Airbus A340-500 jets that seat 12 in first, 28 in business and 200 in coach."
Hogan spoke about the new route, stating that there is "considerable" demand from both business and government interests.
"And it's not only traffic coming out of the UAE, but also regional cities (in Etihad's network) that don't have direct access to Washington," Hogan added. "So normally people travel over Europe to come to Washington. Now they can travel over the Gulf to come to Washington," reported USA Today.
When asked if the move into D.C. was due to pressure put on him by the UAE, the CEO stated, "we wouldn't enter the Washington market unless there was a viable business case. There's no pressure from the owner to fly to cities as a public utility," according to USA Today.
Washington Dulles becomes Etihad's third destination in the United States and fourth in North America. The others, as USA Today reported, are Chicago O'Hare, New York JFK and Toronto.
However, Hogan promised that the list will get bigger next year.
"We have another American city tabled for next year," he said. "We'll announce it at the back-end of this year," stated USA Today.
Hogan also reaffirmed that the company still prefers to join into partnerships with individual airlines rather than joining one of the three global frequent-flier alliances.
This policy is due to the belief that alliances aren't a good move for the airline or the industry as a whole.
"Alliances are fractured as a model," Hogan said. "I think the alliances are always good for the founders or the major players in the alliance groupings. And, quite frankly, in the early days the alliances weren't interested in us, so we embarked on this strategy of strong codeshares [sic]-which is working for us," reported USA Today.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
