Among other places, a second destination in the northern UK is planned.
SUMMARY
- Ethiopian Airlines plans to add Lisbon, Dublin, Amsterdam, another city in the northern UK (joining Manchester), and Warsaw on a passenger basis, some of which were previously served.
- Glasgow or Edinburgh seems inevitable; they had a combined 116,000 roundtrip sub-Saharan passengers in the year to September 2023.
- The airline has traffic rights for up to 28 weekly UK flights, with only 15 presently used.
Ethiopian Airlines will serve 19 European airports with passenger flights this year, based on Cirium data. It comes as it introduced Copenhagen in May, London Gatwick in November (I was on it), and Madrid returns in December. But where might be coming? I met the carrier’s Chief Commercial Officer, Lemma Yadecha Gudeta, at Gatwick.
Future European plans
Airline personnel are usually understandably apprehensive about publicly disclosing much, if anything, about future plans for competition reasons. Not so Gudeta. Of course, there were no further details, including timeframes, but it was nonetheless insightful.
- Lisbon: “a done deal,” subject to slots there. Previously, I showed that multiple carriers have applied for slots at the Portuguese capital for next summer, an airport renowned for a lack of them
- Dublin: “a done case.” Ethiopian stopped serving the Irish capital on a standalone passenger basis (i.e., not continuing to North America) in March 2020, when it operated via Brussels
- Amsterdam: also coming, subject to slots, inevitably helped by Schiphol going back on its plan to reduce and limit flights next summer for noise reasons. Ethiopian last served the city in 2007 when it flew via Frankfurt
- Northern UK: supplementing Manchester in the north (which it serves five weekly via Geneva) and London Heathrow and Gatwick down south; more on this below
- Warsaw: for Star Alliance reasons
Photo: Wirestock Creators | Shutterstock
Another airport in the northern UK
As Gudeta, who became CCO in 2022, said, “We can expand in the UK because we have so many available weekly flights available under the existing bilateral agreement [air service agreement or ASA].” He is shown in the photo below.ASAs still underpin many areas of world aviation and limit how much an airline can fly to another country. Ethiopian can operate up to 28 weekly flights to the UK, of which it now has 15: daily to Heathrow, five weekly to Manchester, and three weekly to Gatwick.