Ethiopian Airlines is Africa’s largest airline, offering a significant amount of both short haul and long haul capacity. While the Star Alliance carrier is generally pretty well regarded, Ethiopian does have quite the variety of business class seats.
Continue reading: Guide To Ethiopian Airlines Business Class Seats
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ET's consistency is absolutely abysmal. I won't fly them again until they have an even moderately consistent product.
I can deal with aircraft swaps, when I know i won't get an ancient business class seat that is falling apart.
I have not flown with Ethiopian but had an award flight booked with them (this was when countries were just starting to shut down their borders during COVID). At least 3 or 4 airplane swaps amongst the 787, A350, and 777 over the course of several months and I didn't bother changing the itin. Just treat it as "don't bother aiming for a specific type of plane, it's luck of the draw and you get what you get." I guess they have since retired their 767s with recliner seats.
Could you also do a guide with Thai Airways? They seem to also have a lot of different business class products though it is more consistent than it used to be... and probably do a lot of plane swaps too.
Keep in mind that of the 787-8 fleet, 6 of the 9 airframes with the Collins seats are powered by Rolls Royce engines (ET-AT*) and consequently cannot operate North America to Addis nonstop due to payload restrictions. Therefore North America routes (other than those via Lome/Abidjan) are restricted to the 13-strong GEnx fleet that includes only the 3 ET-AS* airframes with the Collins seats and the rest with the angled flat Zodiacs.
Having flown them on ADD LHR an aircraft change was made 3 times within a week before departure, 1x2x1 2x3x2 and back to 1x2x1 the original seat 2L was booked then disappeared and no new seat given then the seat re- appeared the day before as 2L - you either go with the flow or go crazy
I just booked an Ethiopian flight with Miles&More, but when I go to Austria (which does the first leg) I can't reserve seats on the Ethiopian flights. And on the Ethiopian website it is not recognising my booking code. Is there some other way to reserve seats on Ethiopian?
You need your SABRE PNR to access the MMB function on Ethiopian's website or app. Austrian uses Amadeus, so the PNR is different.
ET adds yet another seat configuration with their newly delivered 77W, a ntu of China Southern Airlines. They seem to have maintained the China Southern configuration with 28 cloud nine seats in a 1-2-1 configuration. Will also be the first ET aircraft with premium economy!