Etihad Airways is stripping the Airbus A380 from two of its best-known long-haul routes, and the timing is telling. The Abu Dhabi-based carrier will fly its last superjumbo to Toronto on January 18, 2027, and its final scheduled A380 to Singapore departs just after the holidays, with the Dreamliner back in place from January 11.
The Toronto switch is the bigger headline. Etihad only introduced the 486-seat double-decker to Canada in June 2025 — its first-ever A380 service to the country — after redeploying the aircraft from New York JFK. For a while, Toronto had the novelty of two A380 operators, since Emirates has flown the type there since 2009. From January 19, the 371-seat A350-1000 takes over. That is 24% fewer seats per day, and the cut is sharpest at the front: no more first class or The Residence, business seats down 37% from 70 to 44, and economy down 19%. Premium seating drops from 17% of the cabin to 11%.
Singapore follows a similar arc. The A380 arrived there in February 2025, was swapped for a 226-seat 787-9 in early April 2026, and briefly returned. It now comes back on December 15 purely to capture Christmas and New Year demand, then hands over to the 787-9 again from January 11. Etihad's schedule there leans heavily on Europe-bound connections, and the Dreamliner is a better fit for that mix.
The backdrop is a broader shake-up at Etihad following the departure of its Chief Revenue and Commercial Officer, Arik De. Under his watch the airline grew fast and experimented with routes like Luxembourg and Calgary, but an anonymous staff member recently suggested A380 assignments were being shuffled without much strategy behind them. Now the superjumbo network is shrinking to four routes: Bangkok (daily through winter until late March 2027), London Heathrow (twice daily), plus Paris CDG and Tokyo Narita, both returning daily at the end of March 2027. With nine airframes in the fleet and few airports able to handle the type, questions remain about where they all go next.
Why does this matter if you're booking? If you had your eye on Etihad's Residence or first class to Toronto, that window has closed — the route now matches the airline's other North American services, which fly the A350 or 787-9 with little or no first class. Toronto travellers also lose a chunk of daily capacity, so award seats and cheap fares may get tighter, especially around peak periods. On the flip side, business-class redemption space on the A350 can sometimes open up more readily than on packed superjumbo schedules. Singapore flyers get a more consistent product year-round once the holiday-season A380 stint ends. Either way, if you specifically want to fly the A380 with Etihad, your realistic options narrow to London, Paris, Bangkok and Tokyo from January 19 onwards.
Story via Simple Flying.
