Etihad appoints new senior positions in Asia

Cramer Ball, the airline's current country manager for Australia, will become RGM Asia Pacific South and Australasia whilst Joost den Hartog, Etihad's current country manager for Pakistan and acting country manager for China, will become RGM Indian sub-continent, Central and North Asia.

The two new positions will report directly to Adrian Parkes, Etihad Airways' vice president sales.

They will start their new positions from 1 June and both will be based in Bangkok.

Mr Ball will cover a region that includes Australia, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.

Mr Den Hartog will be responsible for a region including India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, China, Nepal and Kazakhstan.

Adrian Parkes, Etihad Airways' vice president sales, said:

'These new positions reflect the airline's ambitious growth and development plans in the respective regions. For example, we started services to Beijing in China recently and announced plans to fly to Almaty in Kazakhstan in December 2008. The airline is also boosting its flying programme to India with the addition of four new destinations - Chennai (Madras), Jaipur, Kolkata (Calcutta) and Kozhikode (Calicut) - following successful bi-lateral talks earlier this year between the governments of the UAE and India'.

Flights to Kozhikode and Chennai will start this summer, with the launch dates of the other two new routes to be announced later in 2008.

Etihad is pushing to secure traffic rights to further cities in India, including Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

In addition, Etihad will increase its daily service to Sydney to 11 flights per week from 31 October 2008.