Whilst not buying bits of other airlines or forming deep codeshares, Etihad runs an airline as well.
Etihad has signed a firm order with Airbus for new equipment. For longer range traffic, they have ordered two Airbus A330-200 passenger aircraft as part of the carrier’s continued growth plans (the A330-200 is range optimised as opposed to the A330-300 which is payload optimised).
The airline has decided to convert existing orders of Airbus A320’s to the larger A321 – a total of 7 aircraft.
Etihad’s CEO James Hogan says
“As our operations and network continue to grow in scale, we feel the A330-200 is the right fleet type to expand with. Our decision to convert seven of our A320s on order into A321s reflects the increasingly strong demand we are seeing across our different routes and we look forward to taking delivery of our first in November 2013.”
For Etihad, its a requirement to have the right aircaft in the right place and it seems this mix of orders should deliver some of that requirement.