Image: Etihad Airways

Etihad Airways, the national carrier of the United Arab Emirates, will launch scheduled service to Uzbekistan on the Abu Dhabi–Tashkent route beginning August 17. The agreement was finalized during a meeting between Uzbekistan’s Deputy Minister of Transport Jasurbek Choriev and Etihad’s Chief Operating Officer, Captain Majed Al Marzouqi.

Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Transport said the carrier plans a “phased expansion” of its network in the Central Asian country, though no further details on frequencies have been released.

The launch was originally planned for March, coinciding with the start of the spring-summer season, alongside other key destinations in Central Asia, the Caspian, and the Caucasus. However, those plans were derailed by recent events in the Middle East.

Etihad, a full-service carrier, aims to fill the gap left by the now-defunct LCC Wizz Air Abu Dhabi. The airline previously outlined plans to operate six weekly flights to Tashkent, along with services to Almaty, Kazakhstan (eight weekly), Baku, Azerbaijan (ten weekly), Yerevan, Armenia (ten weekly), and Tbilisi, Georgia (eight weekly).