Today, I was reading a bit about Ethiopian Airlines, the flag carrier of Ethiopia, with the company slogan "The New Spirit of Africa", an airline which is now Africa's largest airline in terms of passengers carried, destinations served, fleet size, and revenue. In 2022, Ethiopian's fleet is not only impressively diverse but also remarkably modern...with e.g., 18 A350-900s, 27 B787s, and 7 737 MAX8s... already In Service...and outstanding orders for more of the same, and it has ambitious plans, too, for future. Per an Ethiopian official statement, "In vision 2035, we have aimed to nearly double the number of destinations that we will be flying by increasing the number of destinations from 131 today to 207; and to cover this expansion, we have planned again to double the number of aircraft in our flight from 140 to 271. We have planned to carry 65 million passengers and 3 million tons of cargo. We aim to generate 25 billion USD revenue by 2035.”

Interestingly, with an eye to the future, the Airline has also expressed a perceived Gap in its fleet, that intrigued me a bit...the airline is actively looking at new Airbus and Embraer family aircraft to bridge the capacity gap between its Boeing 737 and De Havilland Dash 8-400 aircraft in its fleet. “Currently, we are conducting a fleet evaluation on the narrowbody side for 100-seater aircraft: the Airbus A220 and Embraer 195 E2...” ...

So, in this context, we may call Airbus A220 and E-Jet E2 examples of niche aircraft. Of course, speaking of niche aircraft, in commercial service, there is no better example than the venerable B757. Such (niche) a/c are aimed at filling (much-needed) capacity and range gaps for airlines e.g., speaking of the 757, with its unique and unmatched (capacity, range, power) combo, it ruled and owned its niche segment for more than 40 years, and is still doing so and flying today. Likewise, Ethiopian is evaluating two modern narrow-body/single-aisle/medium-range jetliners (I don't mean B737/A320) to fill the particular gap in its fleet. The A220 was originally designed by Bombardier and had two years of service as the Bombardier CSeries. In July 2018, the aircraft was rebranded as the A220 after Airbus acquired ownership of the program through a (controlling) joint venture. The new Embraer E-Jet E2 (E2 = 2nd Generation), successor to the original and popular ERJ Series, are primarily positioned to compete with the Airbus A220 type. [Note: A (proposed) Boeing-Embraer joint venture for the E-Jet E2 type (eventually) fell through, under not so amiable circumstances...]

Anyway, there are multitude of factors, capabilities, and parameters, an Airline, might consider and evaluate, before selecting a niche-liner that fits its specific objective. Here, for this post, for simplicity, I've selected (and illustrated) 3 (arbitrary) parameters below:

1. Passenger Capacity
2. Maximum Range
3. Maximum Takeoff Weight

And for relative comparison, as it might apply to the case of Ethiopian Airlines, I've included, below, (side-by-side) pictures of all the 4 aircraft in the mix of this consideration, along with 3 screenshots (Graphs) for each of these 3 (above) parameters, and, on each graph, I've shown the sequence of (appx.) values for these parameters for all the 4 aircraft types (B738 -> A220 -> E195 -> Q400). Notice, for Range, how the smaller weight jetliners (A220/E195) have near equivalent or even higher range than that of the bigger and heavier B737.

It's expected that Ethiopian could order either the Airbus A220 or the Embraer E195-E2 (or maybe both?) to fill the gap.... We'll see what happens next...

Hope you enjoy this collection of pictures of these 4 a/c.... [B738 (5 Pics), Azul E195 (2 Pics), AF A220 (2 Pics), Q400 (5 Pics)] ...shown, below, in that order...

Thanks for your interest...!

Edited November 27, 20223 yr by P_7878

Very nice shots! 😉 

Great set - once more !

cheers 😉

An interesting post. Well done! 🙂

Always fascinating P!  Are you a writer?  It shows in your polished and researched articles.  I like all the planes, especially the 757.

Superb Content

Folks: Many thanks for the kind comments...Appreciated much....🙂...!!

 

On 11/28/2022 at 8:22 AM, Jack_Sawyer said:

Always fascinating P!  Are you a writer?  It shows in your polished and researched articles.

Thank you, Jack...! Actually, far from being any kind of real "writer"...🙂.... but for about 10 years, I was a regular subscriber and avid reader of a couple of well-known aviation magazines..."Airways", and "Airliner World", the same folks who also published "PC Pilot"...but that was all many moons ago...🙂...

 

12 minutes ago, P_7878 said:

Folks: Many thanks for the kind comments...Appreciated much....🙂...!!

 

Thank you, Jack...! Actually, far from being any kind of real "writer"...🙂.... but for about 10 years, I was a regular subscriber and avid reader of a couple of well-known aviation magazines..."Airways", and "Airliner World", the same folks who also published "PC Pilot"...but that was all many moons ago...🙂...

 

Very cool!