(Reuters) – Addis Ababa: Ethiopian Airlines hopes to tap surging growth in China and India by opening new flights aimed at making Addis Ababa their gateway to Africa, chief executive Girma Wake said.
“Even one per cent of that market is huge. We will expand our routes into China and India and also the frequency of our flights,” he said in a recent interview.
Ethiopian Airlines is one of a trio of African carriers along with South African Airways and Kenya Airways spearheading change in Africa’s growing airline industry with modern planes and solid safety records.
Girma said Ethiopian was considering raising its weekly flights to China to 14 from 11. “Four years ago we were operating one flight every other week,” he said. “I am sure that within a year it will probably be twice a day, 14 flights a week.”
Emerging markets
Girma, 64, predicted Africa’s airlines would increasingly look to the Far East, rather than Europe and the US, as engines for future growth.
“India and China will have a lot of traffic to Africa in the future. They are investing more in Africa and their people are getting richer. Now they will look for tourism,” Girma said.
Ethiopian Airlines operates 10 flights a week to New Delhi and Mumbai.
The state-owned carrier, which flies to 28 destinations in Africa, forecast last week a 106 per cent rise in 2007-08 pre-tax profits to 448 million birr ($49.3 million).
Revenues and profits are rising despite stiff competition from wealthy, Gulf-based carriers such as Emirates, which are expanding aggressively in the region and even drawing pilots away from African airlines.
The ‘brain drain’ afflicting most business sectors in Ethiopia had left its mark on the airline, but Girma said the carrier has taken steps to alleviate the problem by raising wages and banking on the desire of employees to stay at home.
“We lost maybe 10-12 pilots to Gulf carriers over the last three years,” Girma said. “But we are improving. In the last year, we have lost only one.”
Despite this, Girma remains a solid supporter of Ethiopia’s ‘open skies’ policy, which has seen foreign carriers enter its market.
He said in the last two years several airlines had started flying to Ethiopia, including Emirates, British Airways, KLM and Turkish Airlines.
“Despite their entry, our [revenue] growth has been in the region of 20-25 percent. Small African carriers should learn that there are very few African countries whose home traffic is big enough,” Girma said.
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