Ethiopian Expands East and West

Ethiopian Airlines will extend the Addis Ababa – Bangkok route to Kuala Lumpur on October 31, 2012 with a frequency of three flights per week, the airline said in an email response to Ethiopian Business Review. The airline has also postponed the launching of flight to Sao Paulo, Brazil from its original schedule in December 2012 to March 2013. Ethiopian needs to finalize formalities with the Civil Aviation Authority of Brazil to get regular landing permission at Latin America’s busiest city.

Ethiopian Airlines will be the second African Airline to operate flights to both destinations after South African Airways.

As Brazil is Latin America’s biggest economy and among the top ten in the world, the potential of investment flow to Ethiopia is expected to increase in subsequent years. At the same time, Brazil is the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games host country. This will put Ethiopian in a good position to offer African travellers flexible flight opportunity.

Ethiopian Airlines has been expanding its international routes. It launched new flights to Toronto last July. “This flight is the only nonstop flight between Toronto and Africa” Tewelde Gebremariam, CEO of Ethiopian said in the July/August edition of Selamta, the Airline’s in-flight magazine. The Airline had started flights to Cotonou, Benin in June 2012 and Seychelles earlier in April. This has increased its destinations in Africa to 43 making it an airline with the widest network in the continent. In addition it has 17 flight destinations in the Middle East and Asia, and nine in Europe and North America. The new flight to Sao Paulo will increase its destinations in America. It will also add one more continent in the airline’s flight map.

Ethiopian Airlines has been one of African’s fast growing airlines. After successfully implementing vision 2010 ahead, it embarked a more ambitious plan of Vision 2025. However, when Ethiopian adopted this vision two years ago, the current unprecedented and very bad operating environment was not envisioned, the Airline said. Despite the challenges in the industry, the airline was able to stay on track on its fast and profitable growth trajectory.

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