It’s another important delivery day for Airbus, with Ethiopian Airlines taking delivery of its first Airbus A350-1000.
Ethiopia’s national flag carrier and largest Airbus operator in Africa, has taken delivery of its first of four A350-1000s from Airbus in Toulouse, France.
The delivery marks the first of its kind to be operated by an African-based operator.
With the delivery and acceptance of the aircraft, the A350-1000 will enable Ethiopian Airlines to enhance its premium service on key destinations including Washington D.C., London, Paris and Frankfurt.
To date, Ethiopian Airlines operates a fleet of 21 A350 Family aircraft. A total of 14 additional A350 aircraft are set to join the airline’s fleet in the coming years, including 11 A350-900 and three additional A350-1000.
The A350-1000 will provide great operational commonality with the A350-900 fleet, ensuring seamless integration with shared pilots and mechanics simplifying training and maintenance processes and providing greater passenger capacity. It will be configured with 395 seats, with the largest business class cabin in the airline fleet.
Ethiopian Airlines will also introduce Airbus’ new HBCplus satcom connectivity solution, offering seamless, high-speed gate-to-gate connectivity.
Providing capacity
At a seat count of 395, it is clear that this is providing premium capacity (their A350-900 only has a lower seat count at 348). For core routes that have premium loads, these aircraft will be important to Ethiopian Airlines.
Of course, we’re still waiting on how those 395 seats will be distributed – as Ethiopian Airlines operates a two-class cabin, with business class seat counts varying wildly through the fleet.
For Airbus, it’s also a big milestone moment, as they bring their High Bandwidth Connectivity (HBCplus) with Viasat’s GX Aviation product – which should provide a competitive inflight internet experience in the sky.
We’ll be interested to see what’s been delivered for the passenger experience in the rest of the cabin
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