Andualem Sisay, Africanews

Aero vodochody, a Czech company, is to start assembling aircrafts in Ethiopia, which will increase the number of its assembling plants in Africa to three.

The company is going to start assembling AE 270, the model, installed with a ‘tutboprop’, at premises once used by the Ethiopian Airlines to assemble ‘Eshet’, a crop-duster of Eshet Engineering Ltd.

Aero Vodochody is the largest aviation technology manufacturer in the Czech Republic and one of the oldest in the world. It is fully owed by private group, penta, and has two plants in Africa; one in South Africa and another in Kenya. AE 270, with all materials imported from the Czech Republic, on average costs 10 million USD in the European market. It accommodates 8 passengers and is usually owned by investors and tourists for private usage.

Local representative of Aero Vodochody, Getachew Eshetu is owner of Afro-Asia Technical Trading Enterprise and active in the transport business. The representative of the company who seems tired of the lengthy process plans to start producing AE 270, and to further move into assembling larger models.”

He said that the Czech company has chosen Ethiopia to assemble the aircraft and officials of the Ministry of Transport and Communications have written a letter to the management of Ethiopian Airlines to allow the use of their premises, which they are currently awaiting to receive.

Aero Vodochody, commonly referred to as Aero Vodochody is a location. It was a Czech and Czechoslovak aircraft company, active from 1919, notable for producing the L-29 Delfin, L-39 Albatros, L-59 Super Albatros and the L-159 Alca.

After the fall of the Communist dictatorship in Czechoslovakia in 1989 and in the rest of Eastern Europe, the company lost a major portion of its main market in jet trainers the sales of military aircraft declined in the early 1990s in Eastern Europe as well as in the NATO countries where the entry of a new producer was obviously unwanted Aero was controlled for several years by Boeing.

The local representative of the company, Mr. Getachew, has a facility in Debere Markos to produce 100,000 dollar trolley buses.

The first aircraft to be produced by Ethiopian Airlines was ‘Eshet’, but production has stopped. It was produced by Eshet Engineering Ltd, a company founded in 1987 by Doron Oz, a Civil Engineer and graduate of the “Technion” in Haifa, Israel.