Etihad Leases Returned Heathrow Slot To Vueling

Etihad Airways has leased a daily slot at London Heathrow Airport (LHR) to Spanish carrier Vueling.

According to documents from slot coordinator Airport Coordination Ltd. (ACL), Vueling plans to utilize the slot during the IATA northern summer season for Airbus A320 operations from its base in Barcelona, Spain. The slot lease runs from March 30 through Oct. 25.

Vueling already operates double-daily flights to Heathrow using A320 aircraft and offers 25 weekly roundtrips between Barcelona and London Gatwick Airport, using a mix of A320 and A321 equipment.

The Heathrow slot was returned to Etihad earlier this month, having been leased to American Airlines. The U.S. carrier had been using the slot for flights between LHR and U.S. destinations such as Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) and Philadelphia (PHL), according to ACL. 

However, American continues to offer up to 4X-daily flights between DFW and LHR, as well as operating daily between PHL and LHR. The Dallas route will rise to 5X-daily during the summer 2025 season—replacing British Airways’ service—while PHL will return to double-daily. 

Etihad currently flies from Abu Dhabi’s Zayed International Airport (AUH) to Heathrow four times per day using a mix of A380-800, Boeing 787-9 and 787-10 aircraft. The airline provides about 21,000 two-way weekly seats between the destinations, OAG Schedules Analyser data shows.

On Jan. 14, the airline reported that it handled 1.7 million passengers during December 2024, up by 20% year-on-year. The airline’s load factor was 87%, compared with 84% in December 2023.

“In the full year of 2024, we carried more than 18 million guests, with a very healthy passenger load factor of 87% across the year,” CEO Antonoaldo Neves says. “More impressively, it represents an 80% increase in our total passenger numbers for 2022, underlining our strong growth trajectory over the past two years.”