Amazing order of Etihad

Sabena_690 · Post by **Sabena_690** » 20 Jul 2004, 12:05

Hi all,

Quite an amazing order of Etihad today at Farnborough! They have ordered:
x 12 A332's
x 4 A345's
x 4 A346's
x 4 A380's (!!)

Saw already 3 A332's and 1 A343 of Etihad during the past months. Can't wait to see the A380 in Etihad colours!

Is there still place left in the Gulf for such a big airline, with Emirates having about 40 A380's on order, together with a huge bunch of A330/A340/B777?

Frederic

Post by **luchtzak** » 20 Jul 2004, 12:50

That's an amazing order! How long is Etihad in business?

BBKing · Post by **BBKing** » 20 Jul 2004, 13:25

Not that long ... I think about 10 months or something.

They started with 2 A330's leased from TAM (Brasil).

How are they going to make enough business to full all these planes? It's getting very crowdy on the Gulf market ....

Post by **sn26567** » 20 Jul 2004, 13:31

BBKing wrote:It's getting very crowdy on the Gulf market ....

... but the oil flows freely and brings in a lot of money. Who cares that these airlines fly at 20% capacity? The oil sheiks will fill the gap.

chunk · Post by **chunk** » 20 Jul 2004, 16:06

In the case of Abu Dhabi and possibly Qatar your comments about the oil sheikhs possibly ring true as they have bottomless stores of cash available to them. This is very much a prestige issue for them - the prestige of having a 'National'. For the others however you need to go way beyond that. Etihad is bizarre claiming itself to be the National AIrline of the United Arab EMIRATES??? Do they not see how wierd that looks?

Emirates is Dubai's airline. It may look like to people here but Dubai is NOT a bottomless money pit. It has in fact very little oil left and makes more revenue from trade and tourism than from oil. I think that is why you will find the big expansion now whilst there is cash in the bank. They are banking on taking Kangaroo traffic and tourists mostly and are going for rapid expansion in the entire city - not necessarily with their own money either. A lot of the construction in DUbai is underwritten by people from ABu DHabi and other gulf states - they see the potential as a tourist destination which is why EMirates is expanding at such a rate and gets the funds to do it. I have to say that I know some cabin crew there and there are not many EK flights with low pass. numbers. Full flights to Bahrain on a B777 etc...are a frequent occurance despite the number of flights.

Gulf Air is another story - it looks like it is going to become Oman and Bahrains (or perhaps just Bahrains) baby and they have had to deal in the real world for a long time as neither of these places have much in the way of oil revenues...Abu DHabi let it slide as well hence they have come up with Etihad. GF was mismanaged through the 80's and 90's and is only recovering now thanks to the Aussie now in charge. They are rrelying almost entirely on transit traffic to India and the Far East as well as perhaps Bahrain drect with the number of troops there.

So....its not really oil money in the case of some....

MrAirbus · Post by **MrAirbus** » 20 Jul 2004, 16:46

As thing are today many people have to fly with other airlines and maybe there are big poetical for Etihad to take a piece of the market.
Maybe the A380 order is like the many B747 order that took place during the begging of the 1970 when the JumboJet was entering the huge market. Many airlines buying the B747 flew them for a short wile and then sold them. (Exampel; TAP, SAS, SriLanka!)

ONE thing that bugs me about Etihad is that the airlines name means “DANGER” in Farsi!

Post by **sn26567** » 20 Jul 2004, 17:34

MrAirbus wrote:ONE thing that bugs me about Etihad is that the airlines name means “DANGER” in Farsi!

... but I guess that in Arabic it means something else!

chunk · Post by **chunk** » 20 Jul 2004, 17:51

Yep - In Arabic it basically means 'United'. Or unity. or unites...depends on the context really but you get the idea.

JDarby · Post by **JDarby** » 20 Jul 2004, 19:06

Yes Chunk you are right -- Etihad approximately means "United" and is part of the country's name:
"UNITED Arab Emirates" means "ETIHAD al-Emarat al-Arabia".

Avro · Post by **Avro** » 20 Jul 2004, 19:14

nice to see Ethiad expanding that after such a short period, but I'm also sceptic about all those orders for the Gulf region.

The oil reserves won't last forever and to me it seems that the boom will soon have to end when all those planes will arrive in that region.

ONE thing that bugs me about Etihad is that the airlines name means “DANGER” in Farsi!

LOL

Greetz
Chris
8)

TWA · Post by **TWA** » 20 Jul 2004, 22:15

With such a big order they have to schedule their planes to a significant number of cities, so...I hope we will see one of them at BRU soon.

As Emirates, Gulfair, Qatar are not operating to our national airport, this might be a hugh succes for Etihad.

TWA

chunk · Post by **chunk** » 21 Jul 2004, 09:47

I wouldn;t be too hopeful! Qatar and Etihad are your most likely bets on that front as they are likely to take on the prestige routes. Forgive me if I am wrong but I don't remember many operators doing well on Brussels - Gulf routes and for that reason alone I can;t see Emirates or Gulf doing it. Believe it or not - Emirates don;t take on many routes that won't make money...unless there are route development grants available. I guess that is an option....