For me, ET EWR-ADD has a stop in Togo and a long layover in ADD. The ORD flight, as you point out, is much more convenient to LUN. Having flown the UA EWR-JNB route twice, I like that flight and that connection. Particularly with discovering City Lodge hotel at JNB and the Nando's Peri Peri Chicken in the food court. But to go OT and enter a different sphere, have any of you been following reports that ET ferried weapons to Eritrea for use in the Tigray civil war? Accusations and ET denials. Story is worth following.