Abu Dhabi: Passenger traffic from Abu Dhabi Airports to the UK has grown by 34.2 per cent over the last year, with much of the increase attributed to Etihad Airways’ fleet of Airbus A380 aircraft.
In a statement released by Abu Dhabi Airports, the company said that overall passenger traffic at Abu Dhabi International Airport rose 15.8 per cent in November, as a total of 1.78 million people travelled through the airport last month.
The figure is an increase from the 1.54 million people recorded in November 2014, and brings the total passengers year-to-date to around 21.2 million — up 17.4 per cent from the 18 million in the same period last year.
Ahmad Al Haddabi, chief operations officer at Abu Dhabi Airports, said that the number of seats available on flights between Abu Dhabi and the UK jumped 53.1 per cent over the past year.
Many of the new seats are on Etihad’s A380 flights to London’s Heathrow Airport, as well as Etihad’s new route to Edinburgh.
Abu Dhabi Airports also said there were 14,028 aircraft movements in November 2015, representing a 3.9 per cent increase on the 13,501 movements in November 2014.
Last month, London, Bangkok, Doha, Delhi, and Bombay were the top five routes from Abu Dhabi International Airport.
