Air Arabia Abu Dhabi

Air Arabia Abu Dhabi is a low-cost airline based at Zayed International Airport in Abu Dhabi. It is a joint venture between Air Arabia, the Sharjah-based budget airline group, and Etihad Aviation Group, and its board is made up of members nominated by the two companies. Passengers book it through the Air Arabia website and brand; its flights carry the 3L code. As of October 2026, Air Arabia's company-information page lists Air Arabia Abu Dhabi as the operating company for flights from, to or via Abu Dhabi, with Adel A Ali, the Air Arabia group chief executive, as managing director.

Origins

Etihad announced in October 2019 that it would set up a low-cost carrier in partnership with Air Arabia. The new airline was meant to start flying in March 2020, but the pandemic intervened: it received its air operator's certificate from the UAE General Civil Aviation Authority in April 2020 and launched on 14 July 2020 with two Airbus A320s based in Abu Dhabi. The first flight that day went to Alexandria, and a second route, to Sohag, followed a day later. Wikipedia describes it as the first low-cost carrier based in Abu Dhabi, and says it uses the same service model as the rest of the Air Arabia network.

Fleet

The airline flies only the Airbus A320. In July 2025 it said two new A320s had brought its fleet to 12 aircraft, with two more planned before the end of that year and a 40% capacity increase planned for 2025. Its press releases of October 2025 and May 2026 still gave the fleet as 12 Airbus A320s. Onboard, Air Arabia sells food through its SkyCafe menu, offers a streaming service called SkyTime, and runs the Air Rewards loyalty scheme.

Network

In July 2025 the airline said it served more than 30 destinations non-stop from Abu Dhabi, across the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent and Eastern Europe, having recently added Yerevan, Almaty and Sialkot. Recent changes announced by the Air Arabia press office:

• July 2025: flights to Sialkot in Pakistan began, and services to Multan and Faisalabad were expanded.
• August 2025: seasonal flights to Yekaterinburg in Russia, and more frequencies to Baku and Tbilisi.
• September 2025: non-stop flights to Assiut in Egypt.
• 28 October 2025: three weekly flights to Damascus began; the airline said these would become daily from 1 July 2026.
• May 2026: a three-times-weekly service to Amman City Airport, its second airport in the Jordanian capital.
• 7 July 2026: three weekly flights to Aleppo, its second destination in Syria.

The wider group's half-year results, published on 13 August 2026, said a regional conflict that began in February 2026 had led to airspace closures, temporary operating restrictions and reduced capacity across its hubs, and that group passenger numbers in the first half of 2026 were 14% lower than a year earlier. The release did not give a separate figure for Abu Dhabi.