Etihad Dropping San Francisco Flight in October

by Gary Leff

Etihad launched San Francisco – Abu Dhabi in November 2014. They reduced frequency on the route to 3 times weekly back on February 1. Now they’re eliminating the route entirely October 29. The flight, which has been operated by a Boeing 777-200LR, has not yet been pulled from Etihad’s schedule.

  • Air India’s San Francisco – Delhi flight is a blow to Etihad, which carries a great deal of traffic over Abu Dhabi to India.

  • Emirates has been cutting back its U.S. flights in light of the US administration’s signaling becoming less friendly to many foreign visitors, and the electronics ban on flights from the region.

  • Etihad is scaling back unprofitable activities, such as investments in Alitalia and airberlin. They let go of their CEO who made unprofitable decisions. (So much for claims by Delta, American, and United that Etihad’s decisions aren’t based on profit.)


Etihad Boeing 777-200LR First Class

Etihad is a transfer partner of American Express and Citi ThankYou Rewards. American AAdvantage miles, Korean Air miles, and ANA among others can be redeemed for travel on Etihad.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. Clearly a consequence of the USA disengaging from the rest of the World – but I suspect that nobody in the Bay Area will care very much about the loss of Etihad. I wondered if this was to help London go all A380 but it appears that this merely frees up a 777.

  2. Eek. I have an SFO-AUH flight in late December, booked with AA miles. What should I do?

  3. Huge disappointment to lose this route. Have flown Etihad to India several times in last few years, last time returning from Maldives. Nothing compares… I dread flying Air India, which is mediocre even in first class. Groan.

    Note to JoshB above: You’ll likely be going through LAX now, which will add hours to your flight time.

  4. @CJ – That would be actually help me, since I happen to live in LA. I was originally going to have to position LAX-SFO to get on the SFO-AUH flight. If they can rebook me LAX-AUH, that would be pretty spectacular. But there wasn’t any LAX-AUH Guest First space last time I looked. Maybe they’ll make some available to accommodate folks in my position. Fingers crossed!

  5. Nooo! The availability on that route was amazing. Using ANA miles made it cheap and easy to get to Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

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