Etihad has withdrawn from two destinations: Edinburgh is low yield, low frequency and high fixed-cost; Perth is well-served by Virgin Australia, in which it holds a significant equity stake.
It’s far from the end of the world; it’s not ‘slashing’ by any stretch of the imagination, and in fact some might observe that it’s the mark of a more mature airline - Lufthansa, KLM, BA et al do this all the time. BA, for example, no longer serves Taipei, Harare, Melbourne or Manila, for all sorts of reasons. Airlines simply redeploy their aircraft where there’s higher demand, higher yield and higher asset utilisation.
Although regular Etihad passengers observe an ongoing dilution of their soft product, it’s generally held that the airline’s offer in each cabin class is stronger and more consistent than Emirates, and that wins them friends.
Economy is still economy, though, and trying to offer dine on demand in Business to over 80 passengers on an A380 is doomed to failure, no matter how hard Etihad tries.
Qatar has some very specific issues, and who knows where they’ll end up.
But it’s Emirates that has, I’d suggest, always shown the most unsustainable traits of chronic over supply and unsophisticated expansion. Witness Qatar announcing Doha to Auckland, and Emirates suddenly finding an A380 to run non-stop in addition to three other A380s that they send in daily as tags from Australia. This to a city only twice the size of Nottingham.
