From Africa To Georgia: Ethiopian Airlines Announces Atlanta Flights











From Africa To Georgia: Ethiopian Airlines Announces Atlanta Flights

Atlanta joins Chicago O’Hare, JFK, Newark, Toronto, and Washington Dulles in having Ethiopian Airlines passenger flights.

Ethiopian Airlines 787-9 landing-1Photo: Wirestock Creators I Shutterstock.

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.

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.

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.