The route will begin operation on December 2, 2014 with three weekly flights, using Boeing 737 aircraft. It will bring the total number of Ethiopian international destinations to 84, across five destinations.

“We are very pleased to spread our wings to Doha, one of the most vibrant and fastest growing economic hubs in the Middle East. The new flights to Doha will offer better connectivity and more convenient mobility between the state of Qatar and the continent of Africa,” said Tewolde Gebremariam, chief executive officer, Ethiopian Airlines Group.

"With this new flight, travellers to and from Doha will enjoy convenient and seamless connectivity options, with minimum layover in Addis Ababa, thanks to Ethiopian extensive network in Africa covering 49 destinations," he added.

Close to its seventh decade in operation, Ethiopian Airlines is the fastest growing airline in Africa and has become one of the continent’s leading carriers.

The airline is currently implementing a strategic 15-year plan called Vision 2025 which aims to place the airline as the leader in aviation in Africa. The carrier plans to double its fleet to 112 aircraft, and carry 18 million passengers over 92 routes by 2025. It also plans to contribute positively to socio-economic issues surrounding Ethiopia in particular, and the countries it operates to.

Registering an average growth of 25 per cent in the past seven years, the airline’s fleet compiles 69 aircraft, including ultra-modern and environmentally friendly aircraft such as the Boeing 787, Boeing 777-300ER, Boeing 777-200LR, Boeing 777-200LR Freighter and Bombardier Q-400 with double cabin. The airline also has 29 aircraft on order, including four Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s and 14 Airbus A350’s.

The Addis Ababa – Doha route is already served by Qatar Airways on a three times weekly basis. The Gulf carrier launched the service, operated with an Airbus A320, in September 2013 and has been relying on its global network to provide transfer traffic while the local market has been developing. In fact, our analysis of passenger flows during the airline’s first year of operations (September 2013 – August 2014) shows that an estimated 80.6 per cent of passengers flying on the route were travelling to or from another destination via Doha.

Interestingly, local point-to-point demand accounted for just 17.2 per cent of passengers during this period with notable differences in passenger flows from either end of the route. From Doha behind traffic accounted for 88.3 per cent of demand and local traffic just 10.5 per cent, while from Addis Ababa local traffic held a larger 23.8 per cent share and traffic beyond Doha 73.0 per cent.

Ethiopian Airlines will expect to generate a larger share of local traffic when it inaugurates its operations in December 2014 and will also look to generate additional connecting traffic from across its African network with convenient connections available to and from cities such as Johannesburg, Nairobi, Kinshasa, Lagos, Accra, Dakar, Dar-es-Salaam and Entebbe.

In the chart, below, we look at monthly passenger demand between Addis Ababa and Doha since Qatar Airways inaugurated its services in September 2013. The Gulf hub carrier has certainly had a successful first year of operation, thanks to its strong connecting flows and our analysis shows that for the first nine months of 2014 it secured average loads of 90.2 per cent on the outbound 87.8 per cent on the return flight during this period. Latest schedule updates show that the carrier will actually deploy its Boeing 787 Dreamliner on two of its three weekly rotations on the route in January 2015.

Data provided by