Houston is regaining an important accolade: Bush Intercontinental Airport will offer flights to every continent where people outnumber penguins.
The airport lost its distinction of offering flights to every continent but Antarctica last year with the cancellation of SonAir's charter to Luanda, Angola. But starting this summer, Ethiopian Airlines will fly to Houston from West Africa three times a week. The news release did not specify from where in West Africa.
Ethiopian Airlines will become the 21st foreign flag carrier offering passenger flights out of Bush Intercontinental. And it's the first new international airline in more than a year. The airport added a bunch of international airlines in 2014 and 2015, but it then slowed down, adding only Bahamasair in November 2017.
"Finding the right partner and strengthening our connection with Africa was one of our primary goals in continuing the growth in international travel to the Houston market," Houston Airport System Director Mario Diaz said in a news release, "and we are excited to partner with Ethiopian Airlines to make that happen."The flight to Houston will replace Ethiopian's current service to LAX and be operated via a stopover in west Africa (likely either Accra, Ghana or Lomé, Togo). It will be operated with Boeing 787 equipment. Since both airlines are Star Alliance members, this service allows Ethiopian to plug directly into to United's hub at IAH for passengers and connections. The announcement for this service was made a couple of weeks ago, but a definitive start of service date still has yet to be announced.
I'm not sure I'll ever make use of this particular service - Ethiopia is on the "would be cool to visit, but probably won't get the chance" list - by my Ethiopian co-worker seems excited about using it to visit her family, and the fact that Houston will once again have an air connection to Africa is certainly good for the city's economy and overall prestige.
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