Ethiopian eyeing Scotland

[Clive]

https://simpleflying.com/ethiopian-airl ... -revealed/

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.

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.

[Ekally1]

As much as I want gla to get this business.. I think we need to be realistic . The east have a far larger Star alliance presence feeding into this service from places such as canada , US and Europe etc .. our saving grace could be the traffic jam .

[Iain]

SeanM was hinting a few weeks ago about ET adding another UK route, but I presumed it would be BHX.

It always surprises they do all right from MAN with the 1 stop to ADD - which means 2 stops for anyone connecting onwards. They're competing with multiple other Euro and ME carriers who offer 1 stop itineraries to the same places like CPT, LOS etc. They'll have a similar problem in Scotland at either end of the M8, but particularly at EDI.

[Ken1]

Last time I was at Dublin there were 3 or 4 early morning 4.30-6.30 transatlantic departures by Ethiopian.

Plus reading an old article online, Ethiopians JFK and Newark flights stop both directions at Lome in Africa. Just thinking/ hoping Ethiopian may have realised the potential for routing these daily services through GLA ( not EDI given how much competition is already there). That would be epic news.

[Aerecosse]

They used to offer flights from DUB to LAX and also the option to fly to MAD in the other direction as a stop going to ADD however as far as I'm aware they only fuel stop now.

[maxG43]

Pipe dream for now but would be a massive boost, especially with fifth-freedom rights via MAD, MXP or any other currently unserved European city.

[Humberside]

Plus reading an old article online, Ethiopians JFK and Newark flights stop both directions at Lome in Africa. Just thinking/ hoping Ethiopian may have realised the potential for routing these daily services through GLA ( not EDI given how much competition is already there). That would be epic news.

What Lome has but Glasgow doesn't is Asky - 40% owned by Ethiopian and which feeds West Africa traffic headed for the US onto Ethiopian for the transatlantic leg