Passengers
133,521
Sydney to Abu Dhabi, 12 months to May 2026
Sydney to Abu Dhabi
United Arab Emirates · 310 months of data from Jan 1985 · Abu Dhabi to Sydney
Both directions
269,626
including Abu Dhabi to Sydney
Flight time
14h 25m
scheduled, gate to gate
Load factor
90%
seats filled on this leg
Traffic: 12 months to May 2026
133,521 passengers flew Sydney to Abu Dhabi in the 12 months to May 2026, out of 269,626 on the route in both directions. Flights run about 90% full, much the same in both directions. This route has been reported for 26 years.
The route
Distances are true from Sydney; the ring marks the distance to Abu Dhabi.
How long is the flight?
Scheduled flight time from Sydney to Abu Dhabi is 14h 25m gate to gate, over 12,057 km.
Scheduled block time — gate to gate, not time in the air — taken from the current timetable for this leg. Long-haul flights are often timetabled differently in each direction because of winds aloft, so the return is not always the same length. Check your own booking for the flight you are taking.
Flight numbers on this route
2 flight numbers currently scheduled from Sydney to Abu Dhabi. These are the numbers you book under.
Scheduled every day this week — 8 departures in all.
Etihad · 2 · Airbus A350-1000
EY451 · EY455
Current timetable as at 2026-09-06
Timetables change, and these carry no punctuality figures of their own — no on-time data is published for international flights at all. The passenger and load factor figures above cover the route, not any single flight number.
Passengers, 1985 to 2026
To May 2026 · Marks show industry events
How full were the flights?
Inbound load factor, read as a floor rather than an exact figure. Some flights on this pair also carried passengers to and from other cities, and their seats cannot be split between those journeys. Dividing by every seat on every aircraft that touched the route gives the lowest the true figure can be, so actual occupancy is at or above the line. Seat data begins in 2009, so this series is shorter than the passenger chart above.
Load factor: seats data from 2009
When is this route busiest?
Average passengers by calendar month over the last ten years, relative to the annual average.
Freight
Tonnes of air freight carried on this route — a dimension the domestic data does not have at all.
To May 2026
The route in numbers
| Busiest month on record | 54,479 · Jul 2018 |
| Data coverage | Jan 1985 – May 2026 (310 months) |
| Freight, 12 months to May 2026 | 6,050 tonnes |
| Destination region | United Arab Emirates |
No punctuality data is published for international services, so there are no cancellation or on-time figures on this page. That series covers domestic routes only.