On October 13th, I was tracking ET503 because I had family traveling to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia that day. What I discovered on the previous flight on October 9th, is that they flew to Paris instead. I thought this was because of a medical issue. But when I was tracking it yesterday, it said it was heading for Paris instead of directly going to Addis. We all know that the Boeing 777-200LR is capable of flying long distances. As well as the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, and future Airbus A350.
I also looked on FlightRadar24.com, and Flightstats.com to confirm they flew to Paris. FlightRadar24 says it was scheduled to fly to Addis directly, but on the flight tracker, it was flying into Paris. On FlightStats, the status said it was redirected, but didn’t say it was redirected to a specific airport.
I try booking through the website, and it says they fly directly to Addis from Toronto, and through Rome from Addis to Toronto on the return flight.
Is ET starting to fly YYZ-ADD via Paris now? Is this for fuel stop? If it is for fuel stop, I think it should be through Rome because they have good connection there when ET flies ADD-IAD, or ADD-YYZ via FCO for fuel.
Well, according to the Ethiopian Airlines website, it looks like the next flight scheduled for October 20th, it is scheduled to fly direct. I wonder why they stopped in Paris for the last two journeys.
“Direct” is a euphemism for a flight that connects in some intermediate point, sometimes even with a change of aircraft type. “Nonstop” actually means without stops.
Direct in the USA means a flight with one or more stops.
Direct in most of the rest of the world means nonstop
A through flight in most of the rest of the world is what is called a direct flight in the USA.
To slightly complicate things further, a direct (USA) or through (rest of the world) does not necessarily mean you are on the same aircraft or using the same flight number from your origin to destination. For example, flight ABC123 could go from SFO to LHR via ORD. The aircraft from SFO to ORD is a B737 while the ORD-LHR segment is operated with a B777. This is still a direct (through) flight. Less common today is where you change your flight number but not your aircraft en-route. For example, SFO-ORD-LHR-SNN-ORD operates with a B777 for the entire routing. From SFO to LHR it operates as flight ABC123. The LHR-SNN-ORD segment is flight ABC234. So if you fly to SNN on ABC123 your ticket will show ABC123 but the LHR-SNN segment is actually ABC234.
