Ethiopian Airlines (ET, Addis Ababa International) has settled on Boeing's B737 MAX offering for its narrowbody needs Addis Ababa's Reporter newspaper has said. Referencing personnel close to the airline's operations, the paper says the A320neo from Airbus (AIB, Toulouse Blagnac) and the C-Series from Bombardier Aerospace (BBA, Montréal Trudeau) were among the short-listed candidates that had originally included the SSJ 100/95 from Sukhoi Civil Aircraft (Zhukovsky), the M90 from Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation (Nagoya Chubu), and the Embraer (EMB, Sao Jose dos Campos) E-Jet series.

While no exact number has yet been settled on, it is claimed between ten and twenty of the aircraft will be ordered, though previous reports have pointed to as many as thirty.

The decision to stick with the US manufacturer is in line with existing airline policy of maintaining a nearly completely homogeneous fleet. The ch-aviation aircraft database shows the Star Alliance member's narrowbody fleet currently consists of eight B737-700s and ten B737-800s.

Ethiopian is also expected to announce additional widebody orders at some point in the future as in August, CEO Tewolde Gebremariam told the international press that the carrier may also acquire at least 17 more Dreamliners beyond the 13 on order.