Ethiopian Airlines is to deploy a Boeing 787 Dreamliner on a new route to China.
The African carrier will operate the daily Addis Ababa to Shanghai Pu Dong service from March 29.
Outbound flight ET684 will depart Addis Ababa at 2330 and arrive at Shanghai at 1515 the following day, while return service ET685 will leave Shanghai at 0035 and land at Addis Ababa at 0655.
Ethiopian Airlines placed an order for a further eight B787s last year (see news, August 30), bringing the total number of the aircraft it has on order to 13. It currently has five Dreamliners in its fleet.
In July, both London Heathrow runways were closed for 90 minutes after smoke was spotted coming from towards the rear of an Ethiopian Airlines Dreamliner (see news, July 12).
Investigators sourced the fire to a battery in the emergency locator transmitter used to find missing aircraft following a crash.
In January last year, the B787 was grounded for three months due to another faulty battery system causing problems in two different planes operated by Japan Airlines and ANA (see news, January 2013).
Ethiopian Airlines then became the first carrier to again operate a commercial B787 flight, between Addis Ababa and Nairobi, Kenya (see news, April 2013).
Graham Smith
