Ethiopian Airlines

Is Ethiopian Airlines safe?

Ethiopian is a well-run airline with a modern fleet and a serious safety culture, but its crash record is much weaker than those of Emirates or Turkish Airlines. Two of its aircraft have crashed in the last 20 years, killing everyone on board: ET409 off Beirut in 2010 and ET302 near Addis Ababa in 2019. We score it 63. The fleet and the oversight are good; the accident record, the run of runway excursionsRunway excursionWhen an aircraft leaves the runway surface during take-off or landing, either off the end (an overrun) or off the side (a veer-off).More in the glossary and the difficult operating environment pull the score down.

The two crashes

ET409, 25 January 2010. A Boeing 737-800 took off from Beirut at night in thunderstorms and crashed into the Mediterranean minutes later, killing all 90 people on board. Lebanon's investigators concluded that the crew lost control after mishandling speed, altitude and heading and failing to follow air traffic control instructions. Ethiopian rejected the report and argued that the aircraft may have been hit by lightning or sabotaged. The Lebanese report found no evidence of either.

ET302, 10 March 2019. Six minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa, a four-month-old Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashed near Bishoftu, killing all 157 people on board. A faulty angle-of-attack sensor triggered the MCAS flight-control software, which pushed the nose down again and again. It was the second MAX crash in five months, after Lion Air 610, and it led to the worldwide grounding of the type.

Ethiopia's final report, published in December 2022, put the blame on Boeing's design and on the FAA's certification. The US NTSB and France's BEA said the report had not dealt properly with the crew's actions, notably flying with take-off thrust set, which made the aircraft too fast for the pilots to trim manually. Both views are partly right. The design fault was the root cause, and pilots elsewhere might also not have saved the aircraft.

Recent serious incidents

• 15 August 2022: on ET343 from Khartoum, both pilots fell asleep, and the 737 overflew Addis Ababa at 37,000 feet until the autopilot disconnect alarm woke them. They landed about 25 minutes later.
• 4 April 2021: ET841, a 737-800 bound for Ndola in Zambia, landed at the nearby Copperbelt International Airport, which was still under construction.
• 22 July 2020: a Boeing 777 freighter was destroyed by a cargo fire on the ground at Shanghai.
• Dash 8 runway excursionsRunway excursionWhen an aircraft leaves the runway surface during take-off or landing, either off the end (an overrun) or off the side (a veer-off).More in the glossary: Dash 8-400s ran off the runway and were written offHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary at Juba in December 2019 and at Mekele in January 2024. Another left the runway at Mekele in July 2025, reportedly on its third landing attempt in heavy rain; two crew were hurt.

Only the 2025 Mekele excursion caused injuries. But the sleeping crew and the landing at the wrong airport point to crew alertness and procedures, the human factors that caused ET409.

A young fleet

Nairametrics put Ethiopian's fleet at 162 aircraft with an average age of 9.4 years in 2026, among the youngest in Africa. Long-haul flights use Airbus A350s, Boeing 787s and 777s; regional and domestic flights use 737s, including 27 MAX 8s, and about 30 Dash 8-400 turboprops. Ethiopian runs its own maintenance and a large aviation academy in Addis Ababa, and maintains aircraft for other African airlines.

Oversight and operating environment

Ethiopia's Civil Aviation Authority scored 91.78% in its ICAO audit, according to figures reported in February 2020, up from 65% in 2006 and 73.2% in 2018. The country holds FAA IASAFAA IASAThe US FAA's check of whether a country's aviation regulator meets ICAO standards. Category 1 means it does; Category 2 means it does not.More in the glossary Category 1, and Ethiopian, as an IATA member, is IOSA-registeredIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary. One weakness is closeness: the airline, the regulator and the accident investigation bureau are all arms of one state, and foreign investigators questioned the ET302 report.

The environment is harder than for most international airlines. Bole airport is about 2,330 m above sea level, so aircraft need more runway and climb more slowly. Many African destinations have limited radar coverage and fewer precision approaches. Ethiopia's internal conflicts have closed domestic airports at times since 2020.

Flying Ethiopian: practical points

• On long-haul flights, prefer the A350 or 787. They are the newest aircraft and fly most intercontinental routes.
• For onward African connections, check whether the flight is run by Ethiopian or by a partner such as ASKY or Malawi Airlines; partners are not covered by this score.
• Check your government's advice for domestic travel in Ethiopia, especially to the north, before booking connecting domestic flights.

How we scored it

The accident record (48) is the dominant factor: two crashes that killed everyone on board in 20 years put it in the lowest band of our rubric. The fleet (84) and oversight (80) are strong for the region. Compare Turkish Airlines, a similar long-haul hub airline that scores higher, and Air India.