Ethiopian Airlines unveils European expansion plans

Second destination in northern UK planned

Glasgow or Edinburgh top on card

Airline has traffic rights for 28 weekly UK flights

Ethiopian Airlines will serve 19 European airports with passenger flights this year, based on Cirium data, per monitored report on Simple Flying. It comes as it introduced Copenhagen in May, London Gatwick in November, and Madrid returns in December. But where might be coming? Lemma Yadecha Gudeta, the carrier’s chief commercial officer, opened up on this 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. Among other places are:

• 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. It is a Star Alliance hub and Ethiopian is a Star member

• 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

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].”

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.

In this context, “Northern UK” can realistically only mean Glasgow or Edinburgh. Analysis of booking data for the 12 months to September 2023 shows that both Scottish cities, 75 minutes or so apart, had about 116,000 roundtrip passengers to sub-Saharan Africa. That equates to ~317 passengers daily, excluding seasonality.

In all, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Nairobi, and Lagos (Ethiopian’s largest transfer market from Heathrow and Manchester) were among the pair’s largest markets. In keeping with many other European routes, Glasgow or Edinburgh would inevitably fly via the European mainland until traffic builds up enough to warrant de-tagging.