Air France-KLM & Etihad End Partnership, Cut Ties

Air France-KLM and Etihad seem to be ending their partnership in a pretty drastic way. I’m curious what happened in the background to cause this…

Air France-KLM & Etihad end their cooperation

Air France-KLM and Etihad have had a partnership in some form or another dating back as far as 2012. Initially it was just an interline agreement, with a limited codeshare partnership. Then in late 2023, we saw Air France-KLM and Etihad drastically expand their collaboration.

With this, an expanded codeshare agreement was formalized, frequent flyer reciprocity was introduced, and a promise was made to explore terminal co-location and reciprocal lounge access, in addition to Air France launching flights to Abu Dhabi (AUH).

However, it seems that this hasn’t worked out as planned. In September 2024, Air France revealed it would cut its Paris to Abu Dhabi route as of late October 2024, just a year after the flight was launched. At the same time, Etihad announced it would boost its Paris flights.

At the time it seemed like that specific route just maybe didn’t make sense for Air France, rather than the partnership as such being at risk. Well, now the other shoe has dropped. Air France-KLM and Etihad are concluding their codeshare agreement as of March 29, 2025, and are even ending their interline agreement as of April 15, 2025.

While it hasn’t been explicitly stated, I think it’s safe to assume that frequent flyer reciprocity between the airlines will be ending as well. This isn’t just a reversal of the cooperation that has existed since 2023, but it’s a reversal of all the cooperation we’ve seen since 2012.

This seems like a rather bitter breakup

There must be some bad blood here, or something. What strikes me as most unusual is that the interline agreement is ending — this is a very basic level of cooperation between two airlines, even for carriers that don’t partner. Just to demonstrate how basic of a collaboration this is, British Airways has an interline agreement with Air France, Lufthansa, and Virgin Atlantic, arguably its biggest rivals.

Even if Air France-KLM and Etihad were to end their partnership, you’d think that the interline agreement would stay, but that’s not the case here.

Now, I’d speculate that Air France-KLM plan to launch some sort of a partnership with Riyadh Air, when the airline launches. Air France announced it would start flying to Riyadh, and SkyTeam partners Delta and Virgin Atlantic also plan to fly to Riyadh, and partner with Riyadh Air.

However, I wouldn’t necessarily assume that this would force the Etihad partnership to end. While Etihad’s current management team has been doing a good job running the airline overall, it seems the carrier’s partnership situation isn’t exactly great. I wonder what’s going wrong there, and how that will evolve.

Bottom line

Air France-KLM and Etihad appear to be fully cutting ties. The airlines expanded their partnership in late 2023, though Air France canceled its flight to Abu Dhabi within a year. Now the airlines are not only ending their codeshare agreement, but even their interline agreement, which to me, seems like a sign of bad blood.

What do you make of this Air France-KLM & Etihad breakup?