IntrepidAfrican2

Due to a potential change in company policy, I may start flying ET more, and I’m curious to learn about the airline.

I doubt that I have questions that haven’t been asked before, and wanted to go through forum posts to get a general sense of what to expect.

Does anyone know why South African Airways (which is now a very small airline) has its own dedicated forum, while Ethiopian (Africa’s largest) is here with the ‘Others’?

cheltzel

My assumption about SA is it used to be a much larger carrier than it is now. If SA were to start up now as a new airline, it would not merit a separate forum.

I don't think ET has enough daily posting volume to merit its own forum. I typically use the forum advanced search and use "Ethiopian" (minus the quotes) and search only the thread titles. That should give you the top 80% - 90% or so of all the message activity about ET.

IntrepidAfrican2

SAA was restarted (has been in operation for more than a year) and still has a forum. Suspect there is even less activity on that forum than ET.

Strange outcome, whatever way you cut it.

Thanks for the suggestion. Turns out sense has prevailed and I can continue to mostly use EK.

plunet

There's pretty much activity on the RJ and ET threads on an almost daily basis in the Other Middle Eastern board, but whether that constitutes a sub-forum of itself I dunno.

cargueiro

South African Airways once upon a time was a good airline and Voyager wasn't a bad program as you could obtain lifetime status relatively easily (which included Star Gold) and Miles were easy to earn with loads of partners in SA. It attracted questions about Voyager.

Ethiopian does have a good network but is not an airline most aspire to fly in either J or Y. It has a few fans on these boards... But Sheba Miles must be one of the worst, if not the worst, Star Alliance program and has no credit card IIRC and very few non airline partners.

I imagine it is the poor quality of Sheba Miles that prevents ET from gaining a forum here. Hardly any questions currently are about Sheba Miles and nearly all are about seating, paid upgrades, what to do in ADD, lounges etc.

IntrepidAfrican2

Fair points, but not so sure the prime use of the forum is for mileage programmes. The sub-category is called Airlines and Mileage Programmes. The EK forum is “Emirates | Skywards”. Some people look for information on the FFPs, others on the airlines themselves. If I look at the list of airlines with dedicated forums, I’m not so sure it’s really all about FFPs. Do people really aspire to fly Ryanair?

SanDiego1K

Let's see some statistics about Ethiopian Airline posts. How many threads? Over what period of time? How much activity?

Don't use South African Airways as a metric. It was once a vibrant carrier so its misfortunes today are not a guide for another airline earning its own forum.

Parterre

I have long hoped to see ET get its own section on this forum. I am therefore happy to see this discussion.

Good idea. Sampling the first ten pages on the Other Middle Eastern and African Airlines section, and then every ten pages following, I observed that there were the following number of ET-related threads on each page:

Page 1 7
Page 2 9
Page 3 6
Page 4 4
Page 5 5
Page 6 7
Page 7 5
Page 8 6
Page 9 8
Page 10 3
Page 20 3
Page 30 8
Page 40 6
Page 50 12
Page 60 2
Page 70 3
Page 80 3
Page 90 1
Page 100 1

This is 99 threads directly observed, or an average of 5.2 ET-related threads per page. Given ET's growth in the past two decades and the past decade in particular, it would admittedly not make sense to assume this rate was constant across time. Conservatively assuming 3 ET-related threads per page we can expect a total of 546 ET-related threads in the entire Other Middle Eastern and African Airlines section, given the 182 pages in the section till date. This is of course not a hard number, but rather an estimate, but it does compare favorably to SAA and is close to the figure for Copa. I would note that I suspect the number of threads is not independent of whether or not there is a section. I suspect a dedicated section would spark its own threads and discussions (e.g., standing threads for Ethiopian catering, layover hotels, equipment changes, etc.).