I booked a one way flight with Ethiopian last week online from the UK for Nairobi- Addis Ababa yesterday. When I arrived at check in last night in NBO, I was asked if I had booked online, and said yes. I was asked to go to the ET office in the airport to have my card checked as the reservation was not "open" and I could not be checked in until it was.

As has been mentioned there is possibly a lot of CC fraud, particularly in Africa, so checks may be sensible.

I went to the office where a lady checked the card details against the passport and took a photocopy of them which I was asked to sign (ie same as the signature on the card and in my passport.) The ticket was then "opened", and I went back to check in. This presumably will be what would happen if you went to an ET office Pre-flight as has been mentioned.

I quite often book flights for my employees using my card and will be a bit wary of doing this for these tickets in future as they could be caught out badly. The ET website says the card will have to be presented but I had not found it until looking for it now as I did not recall seeing anything about it during the booking process, the booking email confirmation and e-ticket sent to me had no reference to the requirement to get it Pre-checked etc.

There were three other people there doing the same at the same time whilst I was at the office, British and American, so I suspect it is a thing that affects travellers more than locals - in my very narrow experience