Etihad success pinned on Alliances

By Daisy Melwani

Etihad’s partnership strategy has been a core element of the growth of the business, President and Chief Executive Officer James Hogan has revealed.

Delivering a keynote at the 19th Annual Global Airfinance Conference in Dublin, Hogan said the strategy, which resulted in 5.5 million guests connecting onto the Etihad Airways network from codeshares and partners in 2016, had delivered revenue and synergy benefits.

“Our investments had an immediate impact on the revenue side, delivering hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenues and allowing us to fill our onward connecting flights. Those benefits have been replicated in all our minority investments – in airberlin, Alitalia, Jet Airways, Virgin Australia, Air Serbia, Air Seychelles and Etihad Regional.”

“We also believed our minority investments would unlock an additional advantage that the global alliances were simply unable to use. Because we had ’skin in the game’, we could work on joint procurement and other business synergies which would save us – and our partners – hundreds of millions of dollars. Again, we have seen similar benefits from each of our investments, with those synergies being shared by all the partners.”

Hogan said the third goal of the equity investments, to allow the management of these airlines to reshape their businesses into sustainable profitable operations, required a longer term view.

“Of course, their business strategies remained in the hands of the local management in each case. We are pleased to support management, and to advise where requested, but the plans and implementation are in their hands.”

“In this third area, we have had some strong results but we also face some significant challenges. Jet Airways, Air Serbia, Air Seychelles, Virgin Australia and Etihad Regional have all used our capital investments to help structure their businesses into more efficient and profitable operations. In those cases, our long term investments are already delivering a return.

Hogan said its approach has helped the airline grow from a $300 million a year business to a diversified aviation group delivering revenues of more than $26 billion.

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airline aviation etihad james hogan