Summary
- Ethiopian Airlines will start flights from Addis Ababa to Warsaw via Athens using the Boeing 737 MAX 8.
- Its current Athens service will simply be extended to Poland, a fairly low-risk approach.
- The aircraft will remain on the ground in Warsaw for half a day to connect with a vast range of African flights.
In January this year, it was revealed that Ethiopian Airlines was to add Warsaw to its European route map. Not an obvious route choice, it is mainly because of its relationship with fellow Star Alliance member LOT Polish. Ethiopian’s Chief Commercial Officer disclosed the city to me in late November 2023. During this chat, he stated that Lisbon, Dublin, Amsterdam, and another city in the UK would also materialize.
Addis to Warsaw
Beginning on June 16, Ethiopian will start flying from Addis Ababa to the Polish capital via Athens. Running four times weekly, it will deploy the 160-seat Boeing 737 MAX 8 on the 2,773 nautical mile (5,136 km) route.
It extends service to Athens, currently a terminator operation, helping to increase aircraft use while not requiring another frame.
Photo: Markus Mainka | Shutterstock
The schedule is as follows, with all times local. It currently has no fifth freedom traffic rights and, with the pretty undesirable Athens-Warsaw-Athens times, it is unclear if it will. Some of its existing airport pairs don’t, while others, such as Addis-Geneva-Manchester, started without them but were later awarded them.
- Addis-Athens: ET764, 23:35-05:05+1
- Athens-Warsaw: ET764, 06:05-08:05
- Warsaw-Athens: ET765, 21:00-00:40+1
- Athens-Addis: ET765, 01:40-06:55
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What about the times?
Like many of Ethiopian’s services, the operating aircraft will remain on the ground in Poland for half a day or more. While this looks highly unproductive (it is!), it makes sense, given the timings of its flight banks at its hub. By arriving back at 06:55, passengers can connect to flights across the vast African continent.
If it simply returned straightway, it would have very few African flights to connect to and would be even more costly as flights would be more or less empty.
Ethiopian is trying to change this by developing its third wave of flights at its Addis hub. This is why its London Gatwick service, which was relaunched in November 2023, arrives in Addis in the evening. But there are far fewer flights to connect to than in the early morning, which makes little sense for new European destinations, such as Warsaw, in its network.
Ethiopian Airlines Reveals Its European Expansion Plans
Among other places, a second destination in the northern UK is planned.
20th European airport
Ethiopian’s passenger route map, shown below with the various routings, now comprises 20 airports. It also has freighter service to other places.
Image: GCMap
Half of its destinations are served daily: Brussels, Frankfurt, Istanbul, London Heathrow, Milan Malpensa, Oslo, Paris CDG, Rome Fiumicino, Stockholm Arlanda, and Vienna. With just three weekly flights, Marseille, via Rome, is only three weekly, although the A350-900 is used.
What do you make of it all? Let us know in the comment section.
