Etihad Airways: UAE carrier works hard to soar - FT.com

For Etihad Airways, the national carrier of the United Arab Emirates, the hardest job is to establish that fact.

At just eight years old, Abu Dhabi’s Etihad remains in the shadow of Emirates, the highly successful government-owned airline of neighbouring Dubai.

To create its own space in the market, Etihad has had to spend billions of dollars to get noticed.

It came to the fore in 2008, when it placed one of the largest orders in the history of commercial aviation. The order, worth about $20bn, sent a signal that the airline was serious about becoming a global force, and made not just its Gulf rivals, but also its western competitors, take note.

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