Air Baltic switches UAE codeshare from Etihad to Emirates after Dubai launch

Air Baltic has announced a codeshare with Emirates as it seeks to leverage the connectivity advantages of switching its UAE services from Abu Dhabi to Dubai. The codeshare arrangement – announced on 25 November – follows Air Baltic’s launch of four-times-weekly Dubai services in late September. That marked the end of its pre-Covid codeshare relationship with Etihad Airways, under which it had flown into Abu Dhabi with a focus on winter-only leisure travel from October 2017 until the start of the pandemic. Air Baltic CE Martin Gauss explained that “the key to this route, of course, is the connectivity provided from Dubai”, with the carrier intending “to fly this also through the summer, which would be new”. That means “we have set it up in a different way” to Air Baltic’s Abu Dhabi flights, Gauss said, with connecting passengers and leisure travellers targeted, rather than mainly the latter. Dubai is “more attractive” when it comes to its hub function and the “key points where the Baltic passengers need to go”, Gauss stated, thanks to its “onward connectivity, transit times and available frequencies”. For leisure travellers intending to holiday in the UAE, “it doesn’t matter whether they land in Dubai or Abu Dhabi”, he added.<br/>