Ethiopian Airlines, that country’s national flag carrier, has become the first African airline to order the Airbus A350-1000 airliner, the largest model in the new-generation Airbus A350XWB family. The airline did so by converting an existing order for four of the smaller A350-900s into an order for A350-1000s. Ethiopian had previously ordered 22 A350-900s, of which 16 had already been delivered. With the decision to go for the A350-1000s, the airline’s order backlog with Airbus now stood at two more A350-900s and four A350-1000s.