Ethiopian Airlines Signs for More Boeing 777 Freighters, With Delivery a Decade Out

Ethiopian Airlines has signed an agreement with Boeing to buy additional 777 freighters, Fana Television reported on 30 September.

Fana's account, published in Amharic, put the order at 10 aircraft at a cost of about $5 billion, with delivery falling between 2033 and 2035.

The delivery window is the story

An order placed now for aircraft arriving in the middle of the next decade is not a capacity decision about 2027. It is a slot reservation. Widebody freighter production is booked years ahead, and an airline that wants aircraft in the 2030s has to commit in the 2020s or take whatever is left. The airline is buying a place in a queue.

That framing also changes how to read the price. A figure quoted at list value a decade before delivery tells you very little about what will actually be paid, and nothing about the financing structure — whether these are direct purchases, sale-and-leaseback, or export-credit backed. For a carrier that is the country's largest single foreign-exchange earner and one of its largest borrowers, the financing arrangement is the number that matters.

Cargo is the part of the business that has been working

Ethiopian's freight operation is the reason the airline held up through periods when passenger demand did not, and it is the pivot on which Addis Ababa's claim to be a continental hub rests. Adding 777 freighters — rather than converting passenger aircraft — is a commitment to that hub model continuing into the 2030s, with the volumes to justify dedicated capacity.

Open

The figures here come from Fana Television's Amharic report; the Amharic headline confirms the agreement to buy 777 freighters, but the order size, value and delivery dates are drawn from the body text as rendered in translation and should be treated as Fana's account rather than as confirmed. Ethiopian Airlines has not published a statement of its own in the material reviewed, and Boeing has not confirmed the order. The financing structure and whether the aircraft are firm orders or options are unknown.

Sources: Fana Television, 30 September 2026