Introduction
ANA Business Class Chicago to Tokyo
United Club – Tokyo Narita
Thai Airways Business Class Tokyo to Bangkok
One Night in Bangkok
Thai Airways Business Class Bangkok to Bali
D’Wina Villa Kuta and Exploring Bali (Part 1)
Exploring Bali (Part 2)
Exploring Bali (Part 3)
Ethiopian Airlines Bangkok to Addis Ababa
Ethiopian Airlines Cloud Nine Lounge and Addis Ababa to Seychelles
Hilton Seychelles Northolme Resort and Exploring the Seychelles (Part 1)
Exploring the Seychelles (Part 2)
Exploring the Seychelles (Part 3)
Ethiopian Airlines Seychelles to Addis Ababa and Back to the US
Our flight into Addis Ababa from Bangkok arrived on time at 6:20 am, although we parked in a remote stand, There were buses waiting to take us to the terminal, and it was nice that they had a dedicated bus for Business Class (“Cloud Nine”) passengers, rather than getting packed in like sardines with everyone else. It was a short 3 minute ride to the drop off point for the terminal:
As we entered the terminal, it was relatively simple and sterile, though reasonably clean. We were in Terminal 2, where Ethiopian Airlines and other international flights leave from:
Terminal 1, from what I gather, is not nearly as modern or clean. It’s a separate building from Terminal 2, so I didn’t get to check it out. The building is relatively long, and has 2 parallel walkways. The picture above is looking down the walkway closest to the gate area (on the left, behind the class). Along the right side of the picture is a row of duty free shops, and they all connect through to the other parallel walkway. In between 2 of the duty free shops is one Ethiopian Airlines lounge, but it is an older lounge and primarily used by Gold and Silver members (but not those flying in Cloud Nine). There is a second lounge along the second walkway, and this is the newer lounge for Cloud Nine passengers. When we arrived, the lounge seemed nice and spacious, with a buffet of hot and cold food, as well as plenty of self-service drinks. It was around 6:30 when we got there, and it still was pretty empty:
By 8:00, it really started to fill up, and by 8:30 or so, almost every seat was taken.
It was still better than being out in the terminal, but there is a huge bank of flights that leaves Addis between 9:30-10:30 am (and again between 9:00-11:00 pm), so during those peak times, it gets extremely full. It really would be nice if they could increase the capacity, as we saw lots of people wandering around trying to find an open seat. Our connecting flight to Seychelles was at 10:00 am, so a few minutes before 9:00, we headed out to the gate. In order to get into the actual gate area, we had to pass through a security checkpoint, which was a bit of a pain, but there was a dedicated line for Cloud Nine passengers, so we figured it’d be pretty smooth. Both the Cloud Nine lane and Economy lane merged together at the end, and fed through the same entrance door to security – but there were no employees helping the lines merge, so when we reached the front of the Business Class lane (it was only about 5-10 people deep), a few Economy Class passengers started shouting to us, “Hey, there’s a line back there!” pointing to the back of the Economy Line. “I’m sorry,” I responded, “ the line over here is for Business Class.” Apparently, these guys didn’t really understand what Business Class meant, and I think they thought I was saying it was for “business men” because they responded, “We are all business men, what makes you so special? Oh, is that just a line for Americans? What are we, second class citizens?” Well, when there are two classes of service on an airplane, and you’re not in the first class…call it what you want. I thought about verbalizing that, but decided not to. I was finally able to get the attention of an employee a few steps inside the doorway there was finally an employee, so we asked her to help explain to those men what the 2 lines were for. They didn’t really receive the explanation much better from her, but at least the pressure was off of us. At that point, passed through the checkpoint without much more of an issue, we quickly grabbed our belongings and made our way to our gate for our flight to Seychelles. We thought we were in the clear, but the fun was only beginning.
A few minutes later, from a desk that was off to the side, but still part of our gate area, a muffled announcement said something about a passport check, so a mob ensued to form in front of the desk. We figured we might as well follow, but after a minute of standing in that line, directly behind us, a gate agent announced (simply shouting over everyone, not over the PA system), “Passengers to Seychelles, follow me.” Well, I figured we didn’t want to get left behind, so we followed this agent who barely looked back once as she weaved her way around rope dividers, through the next gate area and over to a set of stairs. There was a line/mob following her, and we all looked around at each other completely baffled, but we followed our leader down a few flights of stairs to the ground floor. When we reached the bottom of the stairs, we could see 2 lines that were formed to exit to waiting buses. The 2 lines each weaved back and forth, and were separated by a wall of glass…but at the very end of the line on the left (we’ll call it Line #2), the glass was open and they were feeding into the line on the right (Line #1) – both lines were exiting through Exit #1. Yet again, this can only really be understood with a diagram, so here goes (and keep in mind that the Line Numbers and Exit Numbers are only to help clarify the diagram – there were definitely no signs or distinctions in actuality, it was simply a sterile room):
Our line leader quickly said “Seychelles passengers over here” and directed us to the line on the right side of the glass wall (Line #1) where there were already about 50 other passengers lined up. Then, she walked outside to the curb where buses were loading. We were one of the first few people down the stairs so we heard where to go, but plenty more passengers on our flight were still coming down the stairs, so they had no clue where to go (and our line leader was already outside with a dozen other crew members), and had to play the game of trying to recognize people they had seen in the upstairs gate area to line up with us. Since there were dozens of passengers already in Line #1, as the rest of our flight filed down, the line still backed up the stairs. As we inched closer to the door (Exit #1), we could tell we were mixed in with passengers on at least 2 other flights, who were getting on buses, and there was no way that any of these buses knew that there were now passengers going to the Seychelles. People were feeding in from Line #2 through the opening in the Glass Wall, so it was anybody’s guess what plane we would end up on. When we were almost to the Exit #1, our fearless line leader came back inside, and told the Seychelles passengers to go around to the line on the other side of the wall (Line #2). So since the rest of the passengers who were lined up all the way back up the stairs were behind us, after turning around 180 degrees, we went from being at the front of the line to the back of the line. We didn’t necessarily care where in line we were, but the whole process was just laughable. To make it even more entertaining, once our line had reversed itself and over to the other side of the glass wall (Line #2), they asked for Business Class passengers to board the bus first, so then we had to maneuver our way back to the front of the line to Exit #2. We finally made it onto a bus, which drove us to a plane at a remote stand. As the first passenger started to get off the bus, the driver looked at their boarding pass and realized that we weren’t at the right plane, so we all sat back down, and he drove us 3 planes over to a plane that miraculously actually flew to the Seychelles.
Onboard that flight, the crew was very friendly and apologetic for the chaos in boarding. They served lunch, starting with some adorable plane-shaped crackers, and roasted barley and grains called kolo. Both were delicious snacks.
The next course was the the traditional Ethiopian dish of injera, which is a spongy unleavened bread (similar to a pita) rolled up and served with your choice of various stew/curry dishes. Lauren tried the chicken and kale; I tried the chicken and lamb. The chicken was very spicy (for me anyway), so I could only have a few bites of it. The lamb was ok, but Lauren was able to tolerate the spiciness of the chicken much better than I, and she said that the kale was pretty good.
It was fun to try their local dish, even though I probably wouldn’t order it at a restaurant. After another smooth, on-time flight, we began descending to the most beautiful islands that either of us had ever visited.
We pulled up to the tiny Mahe Island airport, which typically only serves 1 or 2 planes at a time, with no formal gates. As we pulled in, an Emirates A340-500 had arrived shortly before us from Dubai, and was about to start boarding to return to Dubai.
After making it through immigration and retrieving our luggage, we easily passed through customs and were in the arrivals area within minutes. The next part of our adventure was underway.
Continue to Part 12: Hilton Seychelles Northolme Resort and Exploring the Seychelles (Part 1)