Ethiopian Airlines will operate a daily service between Addis Ababa and London Heathrow from July, the airline announced today.
The national carrier currently flies its B787 Dreamliner between the two cities six times weekly, every day except for Tuesdays.
Starting July 8, Ethiopian will add a Tuesday evening service to this schedule. The outbound service will depart Addis Ababa at 1300 and land at Heathrow at 1900, while the return flight will leave LHR at 2100 and arrive in Addis Ababa at 0700 the following day.
Ethiopian CEO Tewolde Gebremariam said: "We are very happy to finally be able to offer a daily service to our customers to and from London, one of our most important routes.
"We have been constrained to six weekly flights daily but from July our leisure and business customers can enjoy a greater flexibility with our state-of-the-art Boeing 787s affording ultimate onboard comfort with much reduced noise, the largest windows in the sky, dimmable lights, higher ceiling and higher cabin humidity."
Ethiopian will move into Heathrow's new Terminal 2 in September, where it will join 22 other Star Alliance airlines based there.
Gebremariam added: "Being part of the Star Alliance is vitally important to Ethiopian. Aligning with one of the big three alliances helps us with our global competitive landscape, gives us a strong brand advantage and certain cost advantages too.
"It also helps us maintain a high service standard. We can grow as much as we can on our own, but being part of Star Alliance gives our passengers access to 21,900 daily departures in 195 countries and 1,300 plus airports."
Last 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).
Graham Smith
