UAE’s Etihad Airways flew a goodwill flight chartered by the Emirate to return Cuban nationals stuck in the country due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. Havana became the latest addition to a long table of special charter flights to destinations not usually serviced on the airline’s global route network.
Due to the stoppage of all normal passenger flights to and from the UAE on 24 March, Etihad has flown special humanitarian services to 32 cities around the world, all of which are not served currently by the airline’s passenger or cargo network of flights. These include Bogota, Bucharest, Grozny, Kiev, Larnaca, Podgorica, Tirana, Yerevan, Zagreb, Auckland, Bhubaneswar, Bishkek, Dushanbe, Dhaka, Erbil, Kabul, Lucknow, Makhachkala, Addis Ababa, Antananarivo, Bamako, Banjul, Conakry, Freetown, Harare, Kinshasa, Moroni, N’Djamena, Niamey, and Nouakchott. The airline recently completed a special humanitarian flight transporting essential medical and humanitarian cargo for the Palestinian Territories.
Moreover, Etihad has conducted special passenger and freight flights, including charters, to an additional 62 online destinations, and continues to increase this number as it equips to resume a more normalized network of listed flights to, from, and via its Abu Dhabi hub.
Ahmed Al Qubaisi, Etihad Aviation Group Senior Vice President Government, International and Communications, said:
Ahmed Al Qubaisi, Senior VP – Government, International and Communications Etihad Aviation Group
“All of us at Etihad feel a collective sense of pride, and humility, in the knowledge that we have been able to fully mobilise our resources at a time of great difficulty and suffering, to provide essential aerial lifelines to those in need. We have been able to move with agility and fly to territories never served by us prior to the current global lockdown, so we can aid in the repatriation of people.”
“Our services are a natural extension of the goodwill initiatives of the Government of the United Arab Emirates, and other governments and NGOs. As an international airline made up of a close family of colleagues from over 150 nations, we are reflective of the wider global community and do not underestimate the importance of operating such flights in this current situation. We will continue to work with our partners around the world to play our part as things gradually return to normal.”
