Etihad Airways said late on Thursday evening that it intends to slowly resume normal scheduled flights to seven key international destinations starting April 5. The national carrier of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been largely grounded since March 25 after officials banned commercial passengers flights to stem the spread of the Coronavirus outbreak.
Seoul Incheon will be the first destination served once flights resume with Melbourne, Singapore, Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta and Amsterdam following shortly after. Etihad said these flights were subject to government approval and did not provide a timescale for when these services might actually start.
The news that Etihad would resume flights before the end of an official two-week passenger flight ban emerged several hours after Emirates said it had won approval to start limited services beginning April 6.
Emirates will initially only operate 14 weekly flights between Dubai International Airport and London Heathrow, Frankfurt, Brussels and Zurich. Sources claim the airline intends to restart services to other destinations in phases starting May 1.
Until then, all of Emirates passengers flights will operate from DXB’s Terminal 2 – a much smaller terminal normally reserved for the exclusive use of flydubai. Emirates’ cargo flights have temporarily relocated from Dubai World Central airport to DXB.
Etihad says it has been operating special repatriation flights over the last week “which have allowed stranded passengers to return home”. Etihad has also used these flights to bring back fresh food to the UAE, which is heavily dependent on air freight as part of its Food Security Program.
In a written statement, Etihad said of its repatriation flight programme:
“All of these operations have been approved by the UAE Government and we continue to work closely with the authorities on the continuation of these types of operations, with a view to expanding the number of flights on the basis of approaches from a number of foreign governments.”
