Etihad Airways has inaugurated nonstop passenger and cargo services between Abu Dhabi and Dhaka, its first new wide-body route since regional airspace reopened in May. The sold-out flight EY382 departed Zayed International Airport at 22:00 on June 26 and landed in the Bangladeshi capital early the next morning; the carrier confirmed the launch in a 27 June statement. The four-times-weekly Boeing 777 service adds more than 1,600 seats and significant belly-hold capacity each week, directly targeting Bangladesh’s garment exporters and the 700,000-strong Bangladeshi community living in the UAE. Etihad CEO Antonoaldo Neves said demand on the first flight “demonstrates the resilience of South-Asia–Gulf corridors” after months of war-related disruption. For corporate travel programmes the new service offers a premium alternative to the low-cost connections historically dominated by flydubai and Air Arabia, with lie-flat business-class seats and seamless onward links to North America and Europe via Abu Dhabi’s US pre-clearance facility. Logistics managers, meanwhile, gain a reliable outbound option for time-sensitive textiles as exporters race to clear backlogs created when flights were diverted around Iranian airspace. Etihad’s schedule deliberately banks Dhaka arrivals into late-night Abu Dhabi departures, enabling 90-minute transfers to 23 cities, including London, Chicago and Paris—important for migrant-worker leave traffic. The airline says the Dhaka launch is the first in a pipeline of South-Asian expansions that will include Kochi, Colombo and Kathmandu once bilateral aeropolitical issues are resolved.
Source: Gulf News
