Ethiopian Airlines offers a quality flight

ANT KATZ

Ethiopian going places – like Tel Aviv!

Ethiopian Airlines fly the youngest fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners from O R Tambo in Johannesburg to Addis Ababa daily – with an on-bound flight to Tel Aviv just 90 minutes later. On the return leg the layover is never more than 90 minutes either, they say.

Almost half of all their passengers boarding in South Africa go on to Tel Aviv – little wonder the company chose South Africa to open its first office in the world outside their home base this year – they normally operate through agents. And it has paid off, in trumps!

The company’s load rates have increased by 22 per cent this year. And they will be adding further flights from Cape Town as of January 2015 after requests from the Jewish community in the Mother City.

Pictured above & right: Ethiopian’s new Boeing 787 Dreamliners

Sales and marketing manager Pierre du Plessis says that almost all of the people who walk in to their plush new Randburg offices are Jewish – and so the company has “made a point of recruiting Jewish staff members” to suit the profile of their passengers.

Ethiopian has capitalised on the advantages of being a Star Alliance member. These include:

• Economy class passengers being able to take two 23kg suitcases each;
• Earning and using Star Alliance air miles; and
• Africa and Mideast is a single Star Alliance region, so SA-Israel costs the same in air-miles as SA-Namibia.

Ethiopian is a large airline with a young fleet and was the first customer to operate Boeing’s 787. They just received their seventh; by December they will have taken delivery of their tenth and they have 15 in all on order.

This spacious, quiet, new-generation airplane ensures a lot more legroom for passengers and individual entertainment in every seatback, says Du Plessis.

In 2013 Ethiopian Airlines scooped the coveted “Best African Carrier” Award that SAA had held for the two previous years. Their all-new fleet, impeccable safety record and high standards of staff training (they train all of their own staff and those of other airlines too) may have had something to do with why travellers honoured them with this accolade.