The Ethiopian Airlines growth is one of the wildest Untold stories in aviation.

This is one African Airline which has just posted more Revenue than Kenya Airways, South African Airways and Egypt Air combined.

Ethiopian is also in the process of building the largest airport on the entire continent, and it’s turned a profit almost every single year for 80 years through a pandemic, a civil War, and a global Boeing crisis.

This is how big Ethiopian Airlines actually is.

Let’s start with the raw numbers

In the 2025-26 fiscal year, Ethiopian Airlines group pulled in 9.1 billion dollars in Revenue, a 20 percent jump from the year before.

 It carried 20.7 million passengers in a single year and moved 897,000 metric tons of cargo.

The Ethiopian fleet now sits at around 170 aircraft, with dozens more on order.

The airline flies to 145 International destinations, including 65 cities across Africa, plus long-haul routes into the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East that makes Ethiopian Airlines the largest airline in Africa by passengers, Revenue and Fleet size, and its lead over the competition is enormous.

Now, here’s what makes that even more impressive

Ethiopian Airlines was founded in 1945 and started flying in 1946, Making it one of the oldest carriers on the continent and in nearly every year of its 80-year history.

It has always turned a profit.

It stayed profitable through the Covid-19 when most Global Airlines were bleeding … Cash.

It stayed profitable through the Tigray conflict and through ongoing instability in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Middle East.

For comparison, most African airlines are barely breaking even right now.

With industry-wide profit per passenger across the continent, sitting at a round one dollar and 30 cents, while the rest of the Region’s Airlines are fighting over margins measured in pocket change, Ethiopian is the one consistent success story in African aviation.

Some say the Ethiopian Government is running the airline like an army.

The fleet itself tells its own story

Ethiopian was the first African Airline to fly the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the first to fly both the Airbus A350​-900 and the Airbus A350​-1000.

Its average Fleet age is under seven years, making it the youngest wide body Fleet on the continent, and it has roughly 64 more aircraft on order, including the Boeing 787-9 and the 737 Max.

But what it’s actually like to fly Ethiopian.

Most customers praiuse its variety of well-prepared food, very delicious even for an aeroplane.

The top cabin is business class branded as Cloud 9, and it’s the airline’s premium offering across the entire Fleet On the newer Airbus A350 Cloud 9 is genuinely competitive with fully flat seats and some aircraft, offering a one-two layout.

So, every passenger gets direct aisle access.

But on older Boeing 787s, you’ll still find a 2-22 layout, meaning if you’re in a window seat, you’re climbing over your neighbor to reach the aisle Below, that is, economy class with a standard 333 seating reasonably comfortable for the price, but nothing special.

If you’re booking Cloud 9, it pays to check which aircraft you’re actually getting before you fly.

On the Loyalty side, Ethiopian runs its own frequent flyer program called Sheba miles, and it’s been a member of Star Alliance since 2011, which plugs it into the world’s largest airline Alliance with code chairs, including United, Lufthansa, Turkish Airlines, and Singapore Airlines.

If you fly Cloud 9, your ticket also gets you into the cloud 9 business Lounge in Addis Ababa.

It’s spacious, and the food is generous, but it’s also a bit dated and best described as good … Not great.

The loyalty and Alliance side is a clear strength.

The lounges, however, remain one area where Ethiopian Airlines still has room to improve.

But the boldest move might be what’s happening on the ground.

On January 10, 2026, Ethiopian broke ground on Bishoftu International Airport, located about 45 kilometers outside Addis Ababa City.

The price tag is 12.5 billion dollars and at full build out.

It’s designed to handle more than 100 million passengers per year.

The phase one of the project is expected to be completed by 2029, and this includes four runways and a terminal built for 60 million passengers.

When it’s done, it will be the largest airport ever built in Africa.

To put that in perspective.

That’s a bigger annual passenger Target than Heathrow currently handles today and Ethiopian isn’t stopping there.

Under its vision 2035 plan, the airline wants to be operating 271 aircraft carrying 65 million passengers a year, generating 29 billion dollars in Revenue and ranking among the top 20 airlines in the world.

If they hit even half of that, then Ethiopian stops being just Africa’s biggest airline and becomes a genuine Global heavyweight From a single aircraft in 1946 to a continent defining Airline chasing a top 20 Global spot.