Ethiopian Airlines

✅ Verified Review | Addis Ababa to London overnight on Ethiopian Airlines A350. Boarding was quick, all done in 25 minutes with a 85% full plane. Pulled back on time, ie 01.05. Flight time was announced as 7 hrs 15 mins. Reduced size dinner due to time served at 0230, it was fine (I had eaten in a restaurant around 2030). Lights then put off for approx. 150 minutes, then breakfast served. For some reason we were forced to circle 3 times in stack over Essex so for no fault of the airline we didn't land till 06.55. As a very regular London to Addis Ababa flyer I love the A350 even more than Ethiopian's Boeing 787. Cannot fault the flight but was still waiting for bags at LHR T2 70 minutes after landing. Ethiopian has about 25,000 passengers per day. Most of whom do not put up reviews as they are quite happy with things.

✅ Verified Review | Cape Town to Dublin via Addis Ababa. It's my first international round trip, so I have nothing to compare it to. My review is strictly about the onboard food options. My partner and I placed special food orders beforehand and double and triplechecked to ensure it was properly understood. We ordered vegan options i.e. pure vegetarian i.e. free from animal flesh, egg or dairy (milk, creamer, cheese, margarine, butter etc.). We flew Cape Town to Addis / Addis to Dublin return. Cape Town to Addis was fine. Every trip after that was problematic. My partner and I were sometimes given different options, and often these options included dairy of some kind. Sometimes there weren't even dairy-free coffee creamer options available. Staff need to be trained to properly understand various dietary requirements. I don't know how it compares to other on-board airline food, but these were quite boring. We had no other problems with the rest of our experience with the airline.

✅ Verified Review | London to Addis Ababa on Ethiopian Airlines A350. Their 787 and 777s are great too but the A350 is quicker. I have used it twice to Addis this year, January it was only 6 hrs 30 mins flying time, this time 6 hrs 45 minutes. Have flown London to Addis many times on BMI. KLM, Luthansa, Emirates and the old East African Airways in the 70s. Ethiopian Airlines current service and the A350 beats them all. Even LHR Terminal 2, of which I am not fond, was smooth this time with very helpful staff at bag drop. This overnight flight to Addis is at 9pm in UK summer and 8.00pm UK winter. We rolled back in an almost full plane at 9.30 pm. The dinner served about 11 pm was great, on the box it said chicken curry but it was a lovely chicken tika masala and other items on the tray were also excellent. They serve Habesha, one of several excellent Ethiopian lagers but unfortunately do not yet do Ethiopia's first class Rift Valley wines. Arrived Addis 06.30 and visas on arrival was also extremely efficient and quick despite a queue of around 30 people. I fly London to Addis return on average three times a year and right now would not consider any other airline for it. In the past 2 years have also flown Addis Bangkok return, Addis to Capetown, Joburg to Addis. All excellent flights with no problems. Be aware that Ethiopian Airlines satisfied customers do not mostly write on here.

✅ Verified Review | You may think you want to fly the cheapest price but think twice. On our trip this month, after buying the ticket in May, we were told 5 weeks before return flight that there had been some changes and that we had to call in. No phone number was given to call of course. I call USA number and was told the flight was cancelled and we had to return a day later. I confirmed the new reservations. I then had to re-buy new domestic connection tickets on my dime. While we were in Madagascar, with no phone we kept getting emails that our flight was cancelled and that we had to call. We could not connect a call even on Skype. We finally connected with Ethiopian on departure date and it turned out that they had not cancelled the original reservation so that they had duplicate reservations. This took over $100 of cell minutes to establish. When we checked in for return flight from Madagascar, Ethiopian could not print the boarding passes for the onward ticket from Addis Ababa to Washington DC. We were told not to worry and that we would be met at the plane and given our boarding passes. The plane departed Madagascar late after they refused to allow us to carry on bags (despite a check in 3.5 hours early amd half the plane been allowed to). We are now in Addis Ababa and find that there is an unannounced extra stop in Dublin and that our seats have been given away. No body met us with boarding passes and we are now trying to get some.

✅ Verified Review | Nairobi to Bangkok via Addis Ababa. Old plane from Nairobi to Addis Ababa, tray for meal on the seat was broken. Food was ok but cake and snack were very low quality. Friendly staff. A poor lounge at Addis Ababa. Overall I would recommend if you get a good deal. However the flight service was surprisingly good.

✅ Verified Review | Muscat - Addis Ababa - Kigali and Entebbe - Addis Ababa - Muscat in Business. Check-in in MCT and EBB swift. Outbound both flights were on time. On the return, EBB-ADD was about one hour late. This was no problem since we still had sufficient time in ADD (and the lounge in ADD terminal 1 was abysmal anyway). Seats in the Ethiopian B737 were of the old cradle type and did not incline very far. Still they were spacious and comfortable and, using the fold-out footrests, allowed for a nice nap. No IFE was available. Food and inflight staff on all four legs were simply excellent! Friendly proactive flight attendants served an excellent selection of Ethiopian and international dishes, accompanied by exceptionally high-quality wine. The two business class lounges in ADD couldn’t be have been more different. Where Terminal 2 features a modern, clean facility with comfortable seats, tasty food and drinks and sufficient toilet facilities, the old T1 lounge was a smelly unpleasant place with dirty plastic seats, flooded toilets and food which we did not dare touching.

✅ Verified Review | Amsterdam to Cape Town via Addis Ababa. We booked our tickets in January 2017 to fly 19th July 2017. The very next day, I emailed ethiopian airlines to enquire about our special meals and about seating. I had been struggling since day one and kept receiving errors online. Constant emails throghout the year until we eventully flew in July, they confirmed our meals and seating.. Our trip from Vienna to Addis, was awful. Our seating was out by one row which meant we did not get the arranged seating but was put in front of the toilets which flushed all night. The hostess struggled with english and when we told her we had requested special meals, she took out slips of paper out of her apron and checked our seating and said no, nothing had been arranged! We did have emergency exit seats from Addis to Cape Town but no vegan meals arranged? The air stewards / hostesses were not friendly or welcoming but short and abrupt. Lights stayed on until 2am after the hostesses walked around chatting to each other with duty free trolleys while people tried to sleep. We did not sleep a wink. I saw and hear other people around me complain that when they called a hostess, they did not come. One man kept buzzing for about 20 minutes and eventually she appeared. A woman had requested something to drink an hour or more ago and she explained that it was the third time she had asked and still nothing. We did however, have only one person who was extremely helpful ( Global Call Center Ethiopian Airlines, Bole International Airport) and communicated with me before our flights and after but this issue is now out of her hands and was sent to the customer service by me 8 days ago and no reply. This is the worse airline I have flown in 20 years of flying around the world.We are most disappointed with our trip and not sure if we will fly with Ethiopian airlines again.

✅ Verified Review | Frankfurt to Nairobi via Addis Ababa. First they forgot our Luggage on our way there and we were 4 days without our luggage. Then on our way back our flight was delayed and therefore we missed our connecting flight to Frankfurt. As a result we had to stay 24 hours in Addis Ababa in a hotel. But getting to the hotel was difficult because there was chaos everywhere and the ground stuff was more than unfriendly! They sent us from one counter to another and noone had any information on what we can do now! In the end we reached that hotel at 3am after spending 3 hours at the airport waiting for our shuttle. This was the most horrible flight I've ever had and the airline didn't handle it very well. I will never take this airline again and also won't recommend you to take it. Cabin staff and and the inflight entertainment were quite good. But sadly the food was horrible.

✅ Verified Review | Flew Business Class on Ethiopian KGL-ADD, and ADD-DUB-LAX. Seat malfunctioned in DUB, and despite efforts by crew and myself it would not recline even using manual override control under cushion. As cabin was sold out, I lost the opportunity to sleep on a very long flight. I contacted customer service and requested some compensation, who forwarded my details to the central office. Then nothing for 2 weeks until I had to re-inquire. Finally they came back and offered me US$50 or 2,000 Sheba miles. When I said that this seemed insufficient to cover the loss of the seat for 10+hrs, then said I had "utilized all the services of business class", but "to reclaim my confidence" offered to increase their offer to 2,500 Sheba miles. Needless to say I will not be flying Ethiopian again, and I would urge others to think twice. As an additional warning to those who may be considering them, the transfer in ADD is absolutely horrendous, requiring additional security screening with insufficient staff, so plan on 90-120 minutes in line with hundreds of people pushing/jumping lines.

✅ Verified Review | Lilongwe to Nairobi via Addis Ababa, they are currently the cheapest option to go. The flight was via Addis Abeba but still only half the price than a direct flight. Ethiopian usually uses a 737-800 for the LLW-ADD leg and stops in Blantyre, but on Saturdays and Sundays, it is replaced by a 767-300 and there are two seperate flights to Lilongwe and Blantyre. Check In in Lilongwe was messy, as the Check In Agents were the slowest in the world and the ticketing system failed due to a electronic problem. Ethiopian asks its passengers to arrive 3 hours prior to departure which is definetly a good call. As the online system does not know, that on Saturdays and Sundays the aircraft is changed, seats can not be preselected and so it was first come first sit. The flight was on time to depart and about 20 minutes early in Addis. Although the aircraft used was a pretty worn down 767, the seats turned out to be quite comfy and the legroom was enormous. Food was great (I preordered vegetarian) and the crew was very nice and welcoming. Bole International Airport in Addis Abeba is one of the worst managed airports I have ever been to, so as good as the flight was, as bad was the airport. The flight from Addis to Nairobi was on a new 737-800 and although it was packed full, boarding and takeoff were on time. Again very nice and friendly crew and good food. To put it in a nutshell: Flying with Ethiopian is usually the best idea in East Africa, their only downturn is their base at Bole Airport.