Ethiopian Airlines Set To Launch New Business Class Seats

Intro

Ethiopian Airlines has become Africa's biggest and most profitable carrier, serving all 6 main continents on a daily basis, and now over 80 countries. However, one of their main kryptonites has been the lack of a consistent business class hard product, and adding in the fact of how frequent aircraft swaps are, things are about to get worse/better (depending on how you look at it) for some fliers.

ET A350 Product

At the moment, Ethiopian Airlines currently has 22 Airbus A350-900s in its fleet, and four A350-1000s. Certain A350-900s feature the Collins Diamond Aerospace seat, while others feature while certain A350-900s and A350-1000s (all of them) feature the Safran Optima seating in a 1-2-1 configuration. I have reviewed the A350-1000 in business, and I found it decent, but a little barebones.

Ethiopian currently has the Safran Optima seat on all A350-1000

Well, going forward, Ethiopian Airlines is set to now introduce a brand new seat on 11/17 A350-900s to be delivered in the near future. Why only 17? Who knows, that's part of ET for you... However, the product that ET will be installing is the Collins Aerospace Elevation seat, featuring a 1-2-1 configuration and closing doors.

Not bad, but why only 11? Honestly. Additionally, no previous A350s are set to receive this new product...

ET 737 Max 8

Along with the new A350 business class product, Ethiopian is set to introduce a new business class with lie-flat seats on their 737 Max 8 jets. The airline plans to add the Collins Aerospace Diamond seats on 56 of these jets, including new deliveries, as well as some previous Max 8s.

This is the same seat as what is found on the A350-900 and some 787s

Seats here will be in a 2-2 configuration, which will finally mean that ET will offer lie-flat seats on select narrowbodies.

This Is All Great, But...

Look, this is all great on paper, but Ethiopian Airlines is about as notorious for aircraft swaps as TG swapping a 77W for an A350: it happens a lot. Truly. So, while I love to see new products being added, especially lie-flat seats on a narrowbody, I have been swapped 2/4 times from a Max 8 to an -800.

And it's not just me either; many other friends of mine have had this same issue. Now this would be a fantastic idea if all flights to select destinations received the new product, but even flights like LHR are swapped to the older A350-900 at times, which is unacceptable for a top carrier in Africa. I love Ethiopian, but cannot deal with their inconsistencies in aircraft...

Final Thoughts

Ethiopian Airlines is set to launch a brand new business class on 11/17 remaining A350s on order, as well as adding lie-flat seats to 56 737 Max 8s. While these are welcome additions to the ET fleet going forward, ET has made it evidently clear here that they have no plans for fleet consistency in business class, which is a huge shame. A shame because of the potential the airline has with how well they are doing financially at the moment...