Flights from Nairobi to Addis Ababa (NBO-ADD): Airlines, USD Fares

Flights Nairobi -> Addis Ababa (NBO-ADD) — USD Fares, Airlines, Frequency

28 scheduled departures a week link Nairobi (NBO) in Kenya with Addis Ababa (ADD) — about 4 a day — flown by 2 catalogued carriers at a scheduled block time near 2.0 hours. Our catalogue scores corridor demand 8/10 and files it as an intra-Africa + Gulf hub transit corridor.

Nairobi to Addis Ababa connects Kenya with Ethiopia, the two main aviation centres of East Africa, with around 28 flights a week — four a day. The route carries business travellers, traders and a large share of passengers connecting onward across the continent and beyond. Block time is about two hours.

Great-circle distance Nairobi–Addis Ababa is about 1,164 km, computed from the stored coordinates of NBO (-1.32, 36.93) and ADD (8.98, 38.80). What the figure fixes is the sector profile — 1,164 km against a scheduled 2.0-hour block time — and the fuel-and-crew economics behind the fare floor. It does not fix a compensation amount. No fixed-tariff compensation scheme reaches NBO–ADD. EU261 and UK261 do band by distance, but they only cover flights departing an EU/EEA or UK airport — plus arrivals there on a bloc-licensed carrier — and neither endpoint here is one, whoever operates the flight. The Montreal Convention 1999 is what applies, and it pays provable loss, not a tariff.

Airlines on this route

2 carriers operate NBO–ADD: Ethiopian Airlines (ET) and Kenya Airways (KQ). Our carrier table records checked-baggage baselines of 23 kg; the group spans SkyTeam and Star Alliance. That mix decides three things — the fare floor, whether your bag is through-checked on a connection, and which delay regulation covers you.

Two carriers fly NBO-ADD: Ethiopian Airlines and Kenya Airways, both full-service with a checked baggage allowance and meals included. Both feed wide onward networks from their hubs, making the route a key link in the East African network.

The NBO–ADD carriers do not share one alliance — SkyTeam and Star Alliance are represented — and that has a concrete consequence. Mileage earning and lounge access do not carry across the split, and more importantly a connection built across two of these airlines is only through-checked when the two tickets are issued as one. Two separate confirmations mean you collect the bag, clear immigration where required, and check in again — and a missed second flight is your cost, not the airline’s.

USD fares — NBO-ADD

$411 is the lowest one-way economy price the Travelpayouts feed returned for NBO–ADD, for a 2026-08-18 departure, recorded 2026-07-14. That is a single cached observation on this one corridor — not a low across the site’s fare cache, and not a live price — so read it as an observed floor for NBO–ADD on that date.

NBO-ADD fares stay moderate for most of the year, helped by the short distance and high frequency, and rise around the December holidays. Two to four weeks of lead time usually secures a reasonable economy fare in USD.

Across the 3 departure months our cache holds a one-way low for, the cheapest reading on NBO–ADD is $358 for a Jul 2026 departure and the dearest is $405 for Sep 2026 — a spread of $47 between the best and worst month in the same cache. Month-to-month movement of that size is normal on this corridor and is usually worth more than any single booking trick.

NBO–ADD fare history — 2026-W20 to 2026-W29

4 weekly readings between 2026-W20 and 2026-W29 put the cached NBO–ADD low between $381 and $565 — a $184 spread, 48% of the cheapest reading. The low landed in 2026-W23; the most recent reading, 2026-W29, was $395. Each row is one weekly snapshot of the cheapest published quote, not an average of everything sold that week.

The cached low fell 30% between the first and last reading, from $565 to $395. Read it with the sample size in front of you: 4 observations over a ten-week window is a signal about this corridor’s volatility, not a forecast. What it does establish is a defensible floor — you now know $381 was achievable on NBO–ADD inside the window, so a quote well above $565 is worth a second search.

Carriers behind the readings: OW. Where a row shows a dash the gate returned no carrier code with the quote, which usually means a multi-carrier or agency-issued itinerary. Do not read a carrier name here as that airline’s own published fare — it is the marketing carrier on the cheapest itinerary a gate had loaded that week.

How much baggage can you take on NBO–ADD?

23 kg is the checked-baggage baseline our carrier table records for the 2 airlines on NBO–ADD, with a recorded diaspora uplift of up to +5 kg on Ethiopian Airlines and Kenya Airways. Baselines are economy figures and fare-family dependent. The allowance printed on your issued ticket overrides any table, this one included.

A baggage baseline is the economy checked allowance an airline advertises as standard. It is not what your ticket necessarily grants. The same airline sells fare families below the baseline — hand-baggage-only and basic-economy buckets are exactly the ones that surface as the cheapest NBO–ADD quote in any fare cache, including ours. The allowance printed on your itinerary overrides any table, ours included.

Where our table records a migrant or diaspora uplift — +5 kg on Ethiopian Airlines and +5 kg on Kenya Airways — three exclusions usually bite. The uplift attaches to nominated corridors rather than the whole network; it rarely survives onto a codeshare or interline segment operated and ticketed by a different airline; and the deepest-discount fare buckets are commonly carved out. None of that makes the uplift fictional, but it does mean it has to be confirmed against your booking class, in writing, before you pack to it.

Search live fares

28 weekly departures across 2 carriers mean a live NBO–ADD search returns several price points for the same day; our cached floor for the corridor is $411. Scheduled nonstop block time is 2.0 hours, so any result far above that is connecting whatever the screen says.

Search NBO -> ADD on Aviasales ->

Three checks make a live NBO–ADD result comparable. Fix the passenger count and cabin first, because a per-passenger fare and a party total look identical on a results page. Then read the elapsed time next to the price — a one-stop itinerary and the 2.0-hour nonstop are different products at the same number. Then check whether the fare carries the bag you are actually taking.

Flexible dates are the highest-leverage setting on this corridor. Our own cache shows month-to-month movement on NBO–ADD that dwarfs the difference between booking gates, so one search across a whole month tells you more than five searches on a single date. Where the dates cannot move — a pilgrimage window, a school term, a contract start — book earlier instead of searching harder.

About Addis Ababa

6 catalogued corridors in this site’s data reach Addis Ababa (ADD), Bole International, ICAO HAAB, from 6 catalogued origins and 3 carriers in total. That count is this site’s coverage of Addis Ababa, not the airport’s published schedule. Each of those corridors has its own guide with carriers, weekly frequency, scheduled block time and whatever the fare cache holds.

Addis Ababa is the capital of Ethiopia, a high-altitude city that is the seat of the African Union. For travellers from Nairobi it is a business destination and a major hub for onward connections across Africa, Europe, the Gulf and Asia.

Beyond NBO, our catalogue reaches Addis Ababa from 5 other origins: Dar es Salaam (DAR), Entebbe (EBB), Harare (HRE), Johannesburg (JNB) and Kigali (KGL). That matters when the NBO–ADD fare is unattractive: on a continent where positioning flights are cheap, flying out of a different gateway is a real option, and each of those corridors has its own guide, carriers and cached fare floor on this site.

FAQ

Which airlines fly Nairobi to Addis Ababa? Direct NBO-ADD flights are operated by Ethiopian Airlines, Kenya Airways. Compare baggage baseline and alliance in the carrier table above.

How long is the NBO-ADD flight and how often does it run? Block time is about 2.0 hours. The NBO-ADD route runs roughly 28 flights per week across all carriers.

How much does a NBO-ADD flight cost and when is it cheapest? Typical economy fares sit in the $400-900 USD band. Intra-Africa and Gulf-hub transit fares move week-to-week; 4-8 weeks is the typical sweet spot.

What is the checked baggage allowance on NBO-ADD? It varies by carrier and fare class — see the baggage-baseline column in the carrier table above. Full-service carriers usually include 23-30 kg, while low-cost carriers sell it as an add-on. Confirm on the airline’s site before booking.

What currency is used in Addis Ababa? Addis Ababa uses USD. Fares in this guide are quoted in USD; budget on-the-ground spending in USD.

Related routes and reading

2 related pages follow, each chosen because it shares an endpoint, a carrier or an audience cluster with NBO–ADD — not because of a keyword match. The annotations say what each one adds, so the ones that do not apply to your trip can be skipped.

• Nairobi airport (NBO) — Jomo Kenyatta International, Kenya: 19 catalogued departure corridors and 6 arrival corridors.
• Addis Ababa airport (ADD) — Bole International, Ethiopia: 13 catalogued departure corridors and 6 arrival corridors.

Internal links on this site are placed from the data, not from a keyword list: a corridor is linked when it shares an origin, a destination, a carrier or an audience cluster with the page you are on. If a link above looks unrelated to your trip, it probably shares a carrier or a hub rather than a destination.

The airport guides carry what a corridor page cannot: the full catalogued route list at each end, the based hub carriers, the alliance mix and the compensation regime of the country that airport sits in. On a connecting itinerary the transfer airport’s rules matter as much as the destination’s, which is why NBO–ADD links both ends rather than only the arrival.