Ethiopian Airlines has announced and put on sale Addis Ababa to Atlanta. It will be the sixth airport in the US and Canada served by Africa's largest carrier on a passenger basis and the fourth destination in Africa for Atlanta, the world's busiest airport.
Ethiopian to Atlanta
Taking off on May 16th, Ethiopian will launch a 4x weekly Addis Ababa-Atlanta service using its 315-seat Boeing 787-9s. Due to Addis Ababa's high elevation, which impacts aircraft performance and range and means non-stops to the US aren't feasible, it'll refuel in Dublin en route but operate non-stop from the US. That's the same setup for most of its other US and Canada routes.
The schedule is as follows, with all times local. It won't have fifth freedom traffic rights between Dublin and Atlanta.
- Addis Ababa to Atlanta (via Dublin): ET518, 22:00-04:20 (+1); 05:10-09:00 (18h block time)
- Atlanta to Addis Ababa: ET519, 10:35-07:50 (+1) (14h 50m)
Click here for Atlanta-Addis Ababa flights.
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Atlanta to Africa
Booking data shows that Atlanta-Africa had about 203,000 roundtrip passengers in pre-coronavirus 2019. Helped by Delta to Lagos, around a third of passengers traveled to/from West Africa, the biggest region from Atlanta. Then East Africa (~27%), Southern Africa (~25%; helped by Delta to Johannesburg and now Cape Town), and North Africa (~15%). Delta had the biggest share of passengers, followed by Turkish Airlines, Air France, Qatar Airways, and KLM.
Click here for Addis Ababa-Lagos flights.
Now Ethiopian is coming. Thanks to the Ethiopian diaspora in and around Atlanta, the point-to-point market had around 15,000 roundtrip passengers. While still pretty small, it was still Atlanta's fourth-largest African market. Ethiopian will supplement that with traffic bound to/from Eastern Africa in particular, but also elsewhere, especially Southern Africa. However, a two-stop outbound service (via Addis and Dublin) will be less competitive than other options, suggesting it'll compete more on price and going to places others don't.
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Atlanta's top 15 African markets
Booking data shows Atlanta's 15 most popular East, Central, and Southern African markets in 2019, as summarized below. Most that Ethiopian will target are small:
- Lagos: 30,000 (helped by Delta's non-stop)
- Johannesburg: 28,000 (helped by Delta)
- Nairobi: 21,000
- Addis Ababa: 15,000
- Cape Town 9,000 (Delta launched Cape Town in 2022)
- Accra: 11,000
- Cape Town: 10,000
- Abuja: 7,000
- Entebbe: 6,000
- Dar es Salaam: 3,000
- Kinshasa: 2,000
- Douala: 2,000
- Blantyre: 2,000
- Kilimanjaro: 2,000
- Lusaka: 2,000
Click here for Atlanta-Johnnesburg flights.
Ethiopian's North American network
As of January 12th and subject to change, Ethiopian's North American passenger route network is as follows. Notice JFK, which currently runs via Lomé (JFK passengers can connect across West Africa with its ASKY partner). However, JFK will switch to via Abidjan in the spring:
- Addis Ababa-Washington Dulles (via Dublin out, non-stop in): 1x daily this year
- Addis Ababa-Dulles (via Lomé in both directions with traffic rights): 3x weekly
- Addis Ababa-Chicago O'Hare (via Dublin out, non-stop in): up to 1x daily
- Addis Ababa-Newark (via Lomé in both directions with traffic rights): 3x weekly to 1x daily
- Addis Ababa-Toronto (via Dublin out, non-stop in): 5x weekly
- Addis Ababa-JFK (via Lomé in both directions with traffic rights): 4x weekly; last outbound via Lomé on May 27th
- Addis Ababa-JFK (via Abidjan in both directions with traffic rights): 2x to 4x weekly; first outbound via Abidjan May 29th
- Addis Ababa-Atlanta (via Dublin out, non-stop in); 4x weekly; begins May 16th
What do you make of it all? Let us know in the comments.
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Ethiopian Airlines
- IATA/ICAO Code:
- ET/ETH
- Airline Type:
- Full Service Carrier
- Hub(s):
- Addis Ababa Bole International Airport
- Year Founded:
- 1945
- Alliance:
- Star Alliance
- CEO:
- Mesfin Tasew Bekele
- Country:
- Ethiopia
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