China Eastern and Etihad Add New Links to Germany

China Eastern Airlines and Etihad Airways have confirmed this week that they will inaugurate new flights into Germany before the end of this year. China Eastern will introduce a weekly link between Hamburg and Shanghai, while Etihad will fly from Abu Dhabi to Düsseldorf.

The new China Eastern flight will commence in just over five weeks and will represent an extension of the carrier’s existing flight between Shanghai Pu Dong and Frankfurt. This service is operated on a daily basis but from August 29, Monday departures from China will continue on to Hamburg, returning the following day. This will be the only direct through service to China from Hamburg, despite an estimated 53,000 O&D passengers flying between the German airport and the country last year.

The table below shows that Shanghai Pu Dong was the main Chinese market from and to Hamburg over the past year. An estimated 25,136 O&D passengers travelled on the route, around 47.8 per cent of the total traffic between Hamburg and China. This market is split between airlines but unsurprisingly the largest passenger flows are with Lufthansa via Frankfurt (21 per cent), followed by Emirates Airline via Dubai (19 per cent), Lufthansa via Munich (16 per cent) and Air China via Frankfurt (10 per cent).

Meanwhile, Etihad Airways has confirmed that it will introduce flights in December between Abu Dhabi and the German city of Düsseldorf, the capital city of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) operator will initially offer four flights per week from December 16, rising to a daily service from mid-April 2012. The route will be served with an Airbus A330-300 configured in a three-class arrangement.

“The new Düsseldorf services will connect the capital of the UAE with the Düsseldorf catchment area – the second largest in Europe outside of London – which also includes the eastern part of the Netherlands,” explained James Hogan, Chief Executive Officer, Etihad Airways. “Düsseldorf and the region is an exciting destination too for inbound business and leisure travellers from Abu Dhabi and beyond.”

The UAE is already connected to Düsseldorf by Emirates Airline, which offers a twice daily flight to its Dubai International hub. An estimated 166,000 O&D passengers travelled between the German city and the UAE in the past year, up 24.5 per cent on the previous 12 months, but this traffic corridor is more than just point-to-point traffic with around 170,000 more passengers using the existing Emirates Airline flights to connect to other destinations.

Etihad has scheduled its flights to maximise connectivity at Abu Dhabi and provide seamless onward connections across its wider network. As the table below illustrates, 62.3 per cent of passengers on Emirates Airline’s existing flights from Düsseldorf begin or end their journey at a destination other than Dubai International.

Etihad Airways expects to generate similar traffic flows on its own flights as well as further stimulating the market. “Düsseldorf was the logical next step in growing our European passenger operations. By growing direct point-to-point traffic between the two cities, we look forward to strengthening ties between the capital of the UAE and Germany. We will do this by offering passengers great destinations, value and onward connectivity, and by forging sustainable commercial, tourism, and cultural links between the communities at both ends of the route,” added James Hogan.