Etihad toasts record passenger numbers

MIDDLE East airline Etihad Airways – which flies twice daily from Manchester and also sponsors Manchester City FC, carried a record 8.29 million passengers in 2011, up 17% on 2010.

The Abu Dhabi-based carrier said the increase represented an extra 1.197 million passengers on its network, which covers 82 destinations.

 

Etihad said Manchester was one of it’s top 10 busiest routes last year. The airline carried 222,465 passengers, up 29%.

Commenting on the growth, chief executive and president James Hogan said: “This result, achieved while much of the world was still very much in the economic doldrums and oil prices remained high, is testament to our emergence as a formidable force in the international aviation arena. 

“It also reflects our commitment to sensible, strategic expansion which is why we launched eight new routes last year,” he said.

 

The new routes were to Bangalore, the Maldives, the Seychelles, Chengdu, Dusseldorf, Tripoli, Shanghai and Nairobi.

 

Etihad Airways’ busiest route was Bangkok with the airline carrying more than 500,000 passengers to the Thai capital during the year.

 

This was closely followed by London (479,000), Manila (446,000), and Jeddah (289,000), then came Sydney, Frankfurt, Paris, Manchester, Doha and Dublin to complete the list of the 10 most popular routes.