Abu Dhabi-based carrier Etihad Airways will launch daily flights to Amsterdam from May 15, with KLM codesharing on the service.
The codeshare agreement means the two carriers will offer a combined double daily service between Amsterdam Schiphol and Abu Dhabi, with KLM increasing its existing five times-weekly flights between the two cities (on which Etihad already codeshares) to daily from this summer.
Flight EY077 will depart Abu Dhabi at 0930, arriving into Amsterdam at 1340, with the return leg EY078 leaving Schiphol at 2200 and landing back into Abu Dhabi at 0635 the following day.
The flights will be served with a two-class A330-200 aircraft, configured for 22 Pearl business class seats and 240 in Coral economy class.
Etihad is taking a different approach to Emirates. The latter uses the strength of its Dubai hub to make up for the drawback of the limited Dutch market which is dominated by home carrier KLM.
So Etihad is working with, rather than against KLM, by using the power of the latter's short and long-haul network to fill its flights with both transit and originating passengers.
Etihad will also be the only Gulf airline serving three nearby airports, namely Amsterdam, Brussels and Dusseldorf. This offers a good choice of schedules and connecting possibilities for potential passengers.
Emirates, for example, serves Amsterdam and Dusseldorf while Qatar Airways only operates out of Brussels.
As part of today's announcement Etihad and KLM will also expand their existing codeshare agreement, with Etihad placing its code on KLM flights to Stockholm, Aberdeen, Barcelona, Bergen, Birmingham, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Gothenburg, Helsinki, Leeds/Bradford, Madrid, Nice and Toronto, adding to current codeshare flights to Billund, Cardiff, Newcastle, Oslo, and Stavanger.
In return KLM will place its code on Etihad flights to Baghdad, Basra, Calicut, Cochin, Dhaka, Erbil, Hyderabad, Kathmandu, Chennai, Male, Peshawar, Seychelles and Trivandrum, adding to current codeshare flights to Colombo, Islamabad, Lahore, Melbourne, and Sydney.
The move follows the signing of a wide-ranging codeshare agreement between Etihad and Air France KLM last year (see online news October 8, 2012).
At the time a release stated that the carriers would work together on the proposed integration of frequent flyer programmes, including reciprocal ‘earn-and-burn’ privileges for 1.5 million Etihad Guest members and 21 million Air France-KLM Flying Blue frequent flyers across the combined networks. No further information on this has been given in the latest announcement.
Visit etihadairways.com, klm.com.
Report by Mark Caswell and Alex McWhirter
