Abu Dhabi: Italy’s national carrier Alitalia has started direct flight services from Rome to Abu Dhabi, with the arrival of the first flight at Abu Dhabi International Airport on Tuesday evening.

The flight was greeted by Shaikha Lubna Bint Khalid Al Qasimi, UAE Minister for Foreign Trade, Giorgio Starace, Italian Ambassador to the UAE, Ali Majed Al Manoori, Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Airports Company and Peter Baumgartner, Etihad Airways’ Chief Commercial Officer.

Alitalia will fly four weekly return Airbus A330 services between Rome and Abu Dhabi. Onward codeshare connections for Etihad Airways customers will be from Rome to Athens, Milan, Frankfurt, Munich, Geneva, Venice and Zurich. Codeshare connections for Alitalia customers will be over Abu Dhabi to Bahrain, Muscat, Johannesburg, Bangkok, Melbourne and Sydney.

Etihad Airways and Alitalia prior to this have had a codeshare partnership on the basis of Etihad’s Abu Dhabi-Milan operations.

“What we have now is that they [Alitalia] fly from Rome here and we have our code on their Rome flights and from Rome and beyond to different European destinations. On the other side, they will fly the Alitalia code and beyond Abu Dhabi to serve destinations,” Baumgartner told reporters. “It [Rome] is for us now a new destination. We didn’t have any code or any marketing to Rome before, but it’s not our own aircraft, it’s the Alitalia aircraft but we have our crew on board as well.”

“The connectivity over Abu Dhabi from key Asian markets into Italy is an important traffic airflow and Abu Dhabi is in the middle so it’s an ideal hub to connect those together,” he added.

With the addition of Alitalia, ADAC currently lists 54 airlines as conducting flight operations in and out of Abu Dhabi International Airport. Al Mansoori told Gulf News that the addition of Rome to the network is of great importance for both Abu Dhabi and Italy.

“There is definitely a plan and a strategy to expand our airline network, but it’s difficult to put a number and a time on it,” he said. “However, we expect to reach 70 airlines in the next two to three years,” he added.

Al Mansoori said that in the short term, Abu Dhabi as a destination is going to be a great attraction to travellers, especially with new museums that are scheduled to come online on Saadiyat Island, one that would increase the flow of travellers into the city.

For 2012, ADAC had projected that the number of passengers flying through Abu Dhabi International Airport would reach 12 million passengers.

“So far, we’ve reached 14 million,” he said.