NBONairobitoADDAddis AbabaEthiopian Airlines

Ethiopian publishes a piece allowance: two checked bags of 23kg each in Economy and three of 23kg in business, or two of 32kg, with nothing over 158cm once length, width and height are added together. It also says plainly that some routes are counted by weight rather than by pieces, so we read the allowance off the fare we are quoting rather than from a table. In the cabin it is one piece of 7kg in Economy and two in business, at 55 by 40 by 23cm.

It flies as Star Alliance, so a card earned on Turkish, Lufthansa or Singapore Airlines credits here rather than going to waste. Its own programme is ShebaMiles, with four tiers above the entry level: Blue, Silver, Gold and Platinum. Where the ticket is counted in pieces, the extra baggage is 5kg at Blue, one bag of 23kg at Silver, one of 32kg at Gold and two of 23kg at Platinum. Where it is counted by weight, it runs 5, 15, 20 and 32kg instead. Give us the number before we issue.

Send the route and roughly when. The Nairobi sector is the straightforward half; the half worth thinking about is the flight out of Addis, because that is where a routing either holds together or costs you a night. The fare and its rules come back to you in writing, and the whole journey is issued in Nairobi as one ticket by an IATA-accredited agent, which keeps a late first leg the airline's problem rather than yours. How ticketing works here has the rest.