Is it really 6.5 hours to Addis from Bangalore? It's about 4:30 from Mumbai ........ I agree, i hope they use one of their modern aircrafts, though.....
Flew the 350 from Mumbai recently - very good in J. Even better than EK in J where they have an unacceptable 2-3-2 configuration on their 777s.........
I would think there is quite a bit of traffic to other parts of Africa and ET is a good alternate to the ME3 to get to Southern Africa. Let's bear in mind, there isn't a direct flight from India to South Africa at the moment.