Flying Ethiopian Airlines

To be honest, I hadn't heard any good comments about Ethiopian Airlines but my next best option would be to still be in the air when I should be on break. That would be four days lost on my break so I decided to give it a go.

The aircraft was a Boeing 787 Dreamliner that was clean, looked new and appeared reasonably well maintained. I have no access to the service records so I had to quickly view the exterior of the aircraft and the condition of the interior.

Both exterior and interior looked more than reasonable so the stories I had heard may have been overstated. I checked the tyres as we walked out to the aircraft on the apron, that is usually a reasonable indicator of the state of maintenance.

As I walked down the aisles the seats and overhead lockers were in excellent condition, maybe the horror stories I had been told were just stories. Sure, an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX had crashed the week before, this was unfortunate but as we later learned, Boeing had built fatal development flaws into this aircraft.

My experiences on Ethiopian Airlines were all positive, the staff were decent, the aircraft were all new and looked to have decent maintenance. I suspect the stories I heard were from people who had never flown this airline before or if they did it was a long time ago.

In my view Ethiopian Airlines is a fairly decent African airline that is trying to build a niche market position in African aviation and doing a reasonably decent job of building a reputation. Would I fly this airline again, for me, the answer is yes.