Etihad comfortable with Boeing deliveries as profit rises

• Expects 100 new planes by 2030  
• Q1 net profit up a third to $187m
• Passenger traffic up 16% to 5 million

Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways, which posted record profit in the first quarter, said it expects to take delivery of at least 100 planes from US plane maker Boeing over the next five years, helping to equip its route expansion plans.

“We’re getting more than 20 planes a year for the next five years,” Etihad Airways CEO Antonoaldo Neves said in an interview with CNBC.

“We are in good shape because the 787 is coming out of [the] factory on time now,” he said.

Boeing has come in for widespread criticism from airlines over delivery delays, even more so than its European rival Airbus, particularly of its narrow-body 737 Max, which was subject of two fatal crashes in the last decade, as well as the wide-body 777X model, which is still awaiting safety certification.

Etihad, which may be considering selling shares to the public, posted net profit of AED685 million ($187 million) in the three months to March 31. This was up by a third compared with the same period last year. 

The Abu Dhabi-based carrier’s passenger traffic rose 16 percent to 5 million, while load factor (how efficiently a carrier fills its available seat capacity) rose 1 percentage point to 87 percent.

Etihad, which is owned by Abu Dhabi’s $225 billion sovereign wealth fund ADQ, operates a fleet of 102 aircraft and plans to double that by the end of the decade.

It has an additional 94 jets on order, comprising a mix of Airbus and Boeing models.

This includes a $14.5 billion order for 28 wide-body aircraft, made up of Boeing 787 and 777X jets, which was announced last week during Donald Trump’s visit to the Gulf. Neves said he does not expect to take delivery of the 777X planes until 2030.

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Etihad’s first quarter profit comes as Gulf carriers benefit from a resurgence in international travel and long-haul demand. 

Earlier this week state-owned Qatar Airways reported a near-30 percent jump in net profit to QAR7.9 billion ($2.2 billion) in the fiscal year ending March 31, while Dubai’s Emirates posted a record pre-tax profit of AED21.2 billion for the same period.

Boeing’s order backlog stood in March at over 5,600 aircraft, valued at approximately $545 billion. 

Airbus, meanwhile, had a backlog of 8,720 aircraft, nearly 90 percent of which were narrow-body jets like the A320 and A220, according to Forecast International.