Ethiopian Airlines Doubles Jeddah With The Boeing 737 MAX 8

Ethiopian Airlines is increasing flights between its Addis Ababa hub and Jeddah to double daily, starting on February 15th. Some 874 miles (1,406 km) from Addis Ababa, Jeddah is one of 12 airports in the Middle East to have Ethiopian passenger flights. It now has up to 15 daily services to the region.

Ethiopian doubles Jeddah flights

The new service is ET462/ET463, which will be operated by 160-seat Boeing 737 MAX 8s. This second daily is timed rather differently to the airline's growing third wave of flights but is more or less part of it. The schedule is as follows, with all times local:

• Addis Ababa to Jeddah: ET402, 00:10-02:40 ← existing; daily (various widebodies)
• Addis Ababa to Jeddah: ET462, 11:20-13:50 ← new; daily (737 MAX 8)
• Jeddah to Addis Ababa: ET403, 04:40-07:10 ← existing; daily (various widebodies)
• Jeddah to Addis Ababa: ET463, 15:30-18:00 ← new; daily (737 MAX 8)

It'll supplement the long-standing overnight service to/from Jeddah, which is timed to be fed by and to feed Ethiopian's vast Africa network. The existing service sees widebodies, and it varies depending on the day. The 777-200LR is the most used, then the A350-900, 777-300ER, 787-8, and 787-9.

The third wave

Examining Ethiopia's schedule for mid-April reveals that the 11:20 departure to Jeddah will be fed by only a handful of flights from across Africa, assuming a maximum wait of roughly 4h 30m – which isn't very competitive. Then again, in many cases, there are few logical alternatives.

Although not all operate daily, passengers (and limited freight) can connect to Jeddah from various places, including Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Accra, Kinshasa, Lusaka, and Harare, plus two cities in Ethiopia. There's also Delhi and Mumbai (you may be surprised to learn that India is an important market for Ethiopian from Jeddah; see later). Harare is the last to land. It touches down at 07:55, meaning a 3h 25m wait.

The 18:00 arrival will feed only Johannesburg and Delhi, although both require a five-hour-plus wait, along with two cities in Ethiopia. Mumbai has an even longer wait. It seems that, as Ethiopian's third wave develops, the second daily will rely more on Addis Ababa-Jeddah's point-to-point demand. According to booking data, the P2P market had approximately 147,000 passengers in 2019.

Where do Jeddah passengers go?

In 2019, when Ethiopian had its daily overnight Jeddah service, examining booking data indicates that Nigeria was by far the most popular transit market. Despite the detour, India was the second-biggest market, then wider Ethiopia, Kenya, Chad, South Africa, Somalia, Cameroon, Tanzania, and Djibouti.

At the airport level, Jeddah (over Addis Ababa) to Kano, northern Nigeria, was the most popular origin and destination. Islam is the primary religion in Kano State, and the Jeddah-Kano market is reasonably sized. Ethiopian's second-biggest market was Abuja, followed by Mumbai, N'Djamena, Delhi, Lagos, Mogadishu, Mekelle, Djibouti, and Mombasa. While few of these places will be connected by Ethiopian's second daily service, they'll continue to revolve around the daily overnight.

February 08, 2023