My time in Gabon has come to a close, and today was the first day of a long journey to my next stopover point – Dakar in Senegal – a journey that would take me the best part of three days to complete.
My routing from Gabon to Senegal over the next three days is long and circuitous: Libreville – Addis Ababa – Johannesburg – London – Madrid – Dakar. Such a routing would make no sense if I were paying for my flights, but it makes perfect sense when I am using frequent flyer points and I am restricted to flights on the airlines that match my points on the dates and times that are available. The other complication is that direct flights between African countries often don’t exist and the normal way to fly from one country to another in Africa is via a European hub such as London, Paris, Amsterdam or Frankfurt, or a Middle Eastern hub such as Dubai, Istanbul or Doha, or more rarely but more conveniently and cost-effectively, through Africa’s best (by far) connecting hub, which is Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. My routing tapped into a mix of these options.
Fortunately I love flying, so this perverse itinerary suited me well – I’ll take as many take-offs and landings as I can get, especially when they are in exotic locations. I appreciate that my itinerary wouldn’t appeal to many other travellers, which probably explains why I was able to find these available flights and book them using points.
My flight today was from Libreville to Addis Ababa, which was scheduled to depart at 2:05pm. That allowed me a comfortable amount of time to have breakfast at the hotel, take in a 3.5 kilometres walk along the beach, shower, pack and get to the airport using the hotel’s free shuttle bus.
My walk this morning was in the opposite direction than the afternoon walk I did on Wednesday (i.e. I went northwards from the hotel today as far as the Lycée d’Etat de l’Estuaire, an impressive school campus which seemed to be in full operation despite being a Saturday morning).
My flight to Addis Ababa (ET955) was on an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787-9, registration ET-AXK. The plane was following the same circuit as my flight last Tuesday. It arrived just 10 minutes late from Yaounde, but pushed back from the terminal just two minutes late at 2:07pm. The scheduled duration of the flight was 4 hours and 45 minutes, with an anticipated landing time in Addis Ababa of 8:50pm (two hours time difference from Libreville).
My transit time in Addis Ababa after landing was scheduled to be almost 12 hours. Unlike most airlines these days, Ethiopian Airlines still provides free overnight accommodation in a hotel for passengers with a transit time between 8 and 24 hours. What is even more impressive is that after boarding my flight in Libreville and prior to take-off, one member of the cabin staff came to my seat and gave me a printed voucher for my free hotel stay – they had already worked out that I was eligible for the stay without my having to apply for it had had made all the necessary arrangements for the accommodation, meals and transportation. I was very impressed.
I had some wonderfully clear views of Libreville as the plane took off, although they didn’t last long as the plane quickly climbed into thick overhead cloud. Those views in the first minute of the flight were really the only views I had for the entire flight due to the clouds, mist and haze which seemed to span the entire width of the African continent this afternoon.
We landed in Addis Ababa five minutes early at 8:45pm after a really comfortable flight. I passed through security and took the escalator downstairs to my in-terminal hotel room – a very impressive offering by Ethiopian Airlines.
