ET808 distance and great-circle path
ET808 covers 4,068 km, or 2,528 miles. That makes it a long-haul flight, a widebody route with a full night's flying time. Of the 439 routes we track, it ranks 249 by distance.
The plane leaves Addis Ababa heading south. On the map above, the line looks curved. That is normal. The shortest path over a round planet never looks straight on a flat screen. Our guide explains how the ADD-JNB route appears on a tracker map.
Why ET808 block time differs from cruise time
The schedule allows 5.2 hours from gate to gate. That works out to about 775 km/h. An Airbus A350-900 cruises faster than that. The gap is taxi time, climbing, descending and holding.
Winds aloft shift the real flight time by up to an hour in either direction. See how high-altitude winds behave in our guide to turbulence and jet streams.
Can the Airbus A350-900 comfortably fly ET808?
Not at all. At roughly 27% of its range, this is an easy trip for an Airbus A350-900. The airline picked it for cabin size, not distance. The full numbers are on our aircraft page for the Airbus A350-900.
What to know about ET808
- Time change: you land 1 hour behind the time you left.
- Crosses the equator: you swap seasons between takeoff and landing.
- High airport at the start: ADD sits 7,656 ft up. Thin air means a longer takeoff run.
- High airport at the end: JNB sits 5,558 ft up, so the plane lands faster than it looks.