UAE Business: Etihad Airways loss narrows to $476m as Covid curbs ease – Gulf Digital News

UAE Business: Etihad Airways loss narrows to $476m as Covid curbs ease – Gulf Digital News

Etihad Airways has posted a strong recovery in passenger operations in 2021, along with improvement in financial performance, posting a much-reduced loss of $476 million for the year, as against a loss of $1.7 billion in 2020.



The airline carried 3.5 million passengers in 2021, with an average seat load factor of 39.6%. Passenger loads doubled in the second half of the year, reaching 70.1% in December as travel demand peaked during the winter holiday period. The airline recorded a particularly strong surge in passenger volumes in Q4 following the September relaxation of mandatory quarantine periods in Abu Dhabi.



Network capacity came in at 37.21 billion ASKs for the year, with the airline connecting Abu Dhabi to 71 passenger and cargo destinations across 47 countries. The airline launched or restarted operations to 13 destinations in 2021, most notably introducing scheduled services to Tel Aviv following the normalisation of relations between the UAE and Israel.



Etihad Airways posted passenger revenues of $1.07 billion in 2021, down by 14% year-on-year. While ongoing travel restrictions and new variants of the virus dampened demand, the airline saw passenger revenues bounce back in the last quarter of the year, recovering