…Ethiopian Airlines.
Image – The Boeing Company.
The first delivery of 10 787-8 was received by Ethiopian Airlines from Boeing on in a ceremony at Seattle on 14 August, making it Ethiopian airlines the 3rd Airline to own and operate the Boeing 787 aircraft.
ANA and Japan Airlines were the first airlines to operate the 787, with Air India and United Airlines due to receive their 787 aircraft in due course.
The fleet of 787’s will be delivered to 2016.
Ethiopian will be taking their new 787 to Washington Dulles, on the 15th August, and then onto Addis Ababa on 16 August, according to Boeing.
The airline says it will then operate a special VIP sightseeing flight with the Dreamliner to Mount Kilimanjaro on Saturday August 18, before putting the aircraft into service from August 19.
Initially Ethiopian’s first 787 will rotate on African destinations including Kilimanjaro, Mombassa, Harare, Lusaka, Nairobi, Entebbe, Lagos, Johannesburg, Abuja, Malabo, Douala, Lomé, Accra, Maputo and Luanda, as well as international destinations including Dubai, Mumbai, Rome, London and Frankfurt, before settling on it’s planned route of Washington and Addis Ababa using the 787 on 20 September, replacing a Boeing 777-200LR (with the 787 meeting the “Thin and Long” requirement of such a route).
Seating as revealed before is configured in a much heavier configuration than ANA’s or Japan Airlines configurations with:
- Cloud 9 Business Class consisting of 24 seats in 2-2-2 configuration
- Economy Class consisting of 246 seats in 3-3-3 configuration
Soon new airlines Boeing 787 operations will become old news, but for now it’s great to see airlines taking on a new plane and letting them wild with it
Awesome! I hope they fly them up to YYZ soon. For now it is the 77L.
I wonder how easy it will be to use UA miles?
@CDKing – Subject to United’s StarNet Blocking, it shouldn’t be too impossible….
The inaugural flight out of DC only has saver coach available :(. i totally skimmed over the specs but 2-2-2 & 3-3-3 is what UA is going to be using 🙁 🙁