Revealed: Here’s Where Ethiopian Airlines’ USA Passengers Actually Travel

BYJAMES PEARSON

Ethiopian Airlinesis an enormously important African operator to theUSA. In 2019, it carried 396,000 roundtrip US passengers. But where did they actually go? That’s what this article examines. Note that I didn’t use numbers from the full year 2020 or 2021 because of how affected they were.

Ethiopian Airlines: 396,000 US passengers

Analyzing Department of Transportation and booking data reveals that Ethiopian Airlines carried approximately 396,000 passengers to/from the US in 2019. It was the highest ever and up from just 90,000 a decade before. In 2020, some 222,000 flew, and about 332,000 the following year. January and July 2022 saw 147,000, only 67% of the number in the same seven months of 2019.

In 2019, Ethiopian Airlines’ US operation had an average seat load factor of 75%. It had the followingroutes, two of which no longer operate:

Addis Ababa-Washington Dulles: 208,000 passengers in 2019 (84% SLF)
Addis Ababa-Chicago O’Hare: 84,000 (75%)
Addis Ababa-Newark: 75,000 (63%)
Addis Ababa-JFK: 21,000 (61%)
Addis Ababa-Los Angeles(ended in February 2019): 4,798 (47%)
Addis Ababa-Houston(started in December 2019, ended in May 2020): 2,834 (75%)

Where did US passengers go?

Whether surprising or not, the largest chunk of Ethiopian Airlines’ passengers was point-to-point (P2P), as shown below. About four in every ten flew only betweenAddis Ababaand the US.

P2P: 158,000 passengers in 2019
Transited Addis Ababa: 97,000
Flew xxx-USA airport served by Ethiopian-Addis Ababa: 75,000
Bridged (flew xxx-USA-Addis Ababa-xxx): 66,000

If you add P2P to the third category, a total of 233,000 passengers (nearly six in ten) didn’t transit beyond Ethiopia. Seattle-Addis Ababa, Minneapolis-Addis Ababa, Atlanta-Addis Ababa, Denver-Addis Ababa, and Las Vegas-Addis Ababa were the biggest markets because of the diaspora. They flew fellow Star Alliance carrier United, and passengers primarily connected to Ethiopian in Dulles and Chicago.

Notice the last category. This is where passengers ‘bridge’ two airports/hubs. Ethiopian’s largest bridging origin and destination (O&D) market was Minneapolis-Jijiga (Ethiopia), followed by Minneapolis-Hargeisa (Somaliland), Detroit-Djibouti, Columbus-Hargeisa, and Seattle-Asmara (Eritrea), also driven by the diaspora.