Ethiopian Airlines has opened a direct link between its Addis Ababa hub and Port Louis, Mauritius, with the new three-times-weekly service taking effect on 12 July 2026. The route is operated with the Boeing 737 MAX 8 and runs on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
Flight ET887 departs Addis Ababa Bole International Airport at 08:50 and lands in Port Louis at 15:20. The return leg, ET886, leaves Mauritius at 16:15 and arrives back in Addis Ababa at 20:45, giving the aircraft a short turnaround on the island before heading north again.
Filling a long-standing gap in the network
Until now, Ethiopian served Mauritius indirectly. Passengers travelling between the two markets relied on interline and codeshare arrangements routed through regional hubs such as Johannesburg, Nairobi and Antananarivo, adding connection time to what is a relatively short sector across the Indian Ocean rim. The nonstop removes that detour for point-to-point travellers and, just as importantly, plugs Mauritius into the carrier's wider Addis Ababa bank of connections.
That connectivity is the real prize. Addis Ababa is Africa's busiest transfer hub, and a Mauritius flight timed to arrive in the afternoon and depart in the early evening allows the island to feed traffic into onward services across the continent, the Gulf, Asia and Europe. For a tourism-dependent economy like Mauritius, a new hub connection is a network gain rather than simply another point on the map.
Why the 737 MAX 8 fits
The choice of the 737 MAX 8 is telling. Ethiopian operates one of Africa's most diverse fleets, ranging from the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 down to regional turboprops, and the narrowbody is the right size for a route that is being launched at three weekly frequencies rather than daily. The MAX 8's range comfortably covers the sector, and its trip cost is far lower than that of a widebody flown with empty seats.
It also gives the airline flexibility. If demand builds, frequencies can be added before any decision is needed on up-gauging to a larger aircraft. If it does not, a narrowbody rotation is far easier to absorb than a widebody commitment.
Part of a wider African push
The Mauritius launch continues Ethiopian's steady expansion of its network, which has added both intercontinental and intra-African destinations over the past year. Regional routes rarely generate the headlines that long-haul launches do, but they are the backbone of the hub model: each new African point increases the number of city pairs the airline can sell through Addis Ababa.
Mauritius sits at the edge of that map, roughly 2,000 nautical miles from Addis Ababa across open water. It is a leisure market first and foremost, but one with a growing business and diaspora component, and it has historically been served by a small group of carriers with limited onward connectivity.
For now, the schedule is deliberately modest. Three weekly rotations let Ethiopian test the market through the first full season before committing further capacity. If the island proves as receptive as the airline hopes, more frequencies are the logical next step.
Sources: Ethiopian Airlines, Aviation24. Featured image: AI-generated by AviationShop. By Daniel Okafor.
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