Etihad Airways will launch daily flights between Abu Dhabi and Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands.
The new services will begin on Wednesday, 15 May 2013 and carry the KL code of KLM.
The daily flights will complement KLM’s current service between Amsterdam and Abu Dhabi which will increase to daily from the Summer and carry Etihad Airways’ EY code, ensuring that the two airlines can offer a combined double daily service.
Etihad Airways will operate a two-class Airbus A330-200 aircraft on the new Amsterdam service, configured with 22 seats in Pearl Business class and 240 in Coral Economy class, offering each week a total of 3,668 seats between the two capital cities.
The codeshare expansion will see Etihad Airways placing its EY code on KLM flights to Stockholm, Aberdeen, Barcelona, Bergen, Birmingham, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Gothenburg, Helsinki, Leeds/Bradford, Madrid, Nice and Toronto. This adds to the current codeshare flights to Billund, Cardiff, Newcastle, Oslo, and Stavanger.
In return, KLM will place its KL code on Etihad Airways flights to Baghdad, Basra, Calicut, Cochin, Dhaka, Erbil, Hyderabad, Kathmandu, Chennai, Male, Peshawar, Seychelles and Trivandrum. This adds to the current codeshare flights to Colombo, Islamabad, Lahore, Melbourne, and Sydney.
Etihad Airways and strategic partner Air France-KLM unveiled plans to work together on codeshare routes, commercial development and cost synergies in October 2012. The agreement expanded Etihad Airways’ network to 337 destinations.
These new destinations are part of the airline’s 10-year network growth plan which will see Etihad Airways fly to more than 100 destinations with a fleet of more than 150 aircraft by 2020.
Source: Etihad Airways