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Rituparna Chatterjee – Mumbai
With a view to penetrate further into the India market, Ethiopian Airlines, has a two fold-expansion plan – to increase capacity of its existing points and expand operations preferably to Chennai and Ahmedabad. Presently, the airline operates daily flights from Mumbai and Delhi to Addis Ababa (capital of Ethiopia). Mumbai is operated by Boeing 787 and 777 and Delhi is operated by Boeing 757 and 737. The plan is to increase capacity to Delhi by upgrading to Boeing 767 and 787 from Boeing 757 by end of this year. The airline has been witnessing 80 per cent plus load factor from Mumbai and 85 per cent plus load factor from Delhi.
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Tadesse Tilahun
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Speaking about this expansion, Tadesse Tilahun, regional director, India sub-continent, Ethiopian Airlines stated, “Initially, we used to operate small aircraft in Mumbai, and in Delhi we used to operate in combination with China. Now we have upgraded to almost twice capacity aircraft to Mumbai and Delhi is being operated as an independent operation. This shows that the market is growing. Hence, we are looking at expansion. Cities like Chennai and Ahmedabad have good potential from Africa.” He added, “Currently expansion studies are going on and once completed, we will expand. It is a short term plan and it’s not decided when this might take place.” Ethiopian Airlines has been expanding in Europe and Asia. In early 2014 the airline introduced connections to Vienna and Madrid via Addis Ababa. “Every season we are introducing two to three new destinations to Africa or Europe. Next expansion would be in October. The destinations haven’t been decided as of yet,” he mentioned.
On being asked about the company’s growth over the years in the India market, Tilahun opined, “We are improving our product and service and evaluating and revising our prices and incentives as per the market. We have been experiencing a double digit growth year-on-year and we hope to have a good performance this year as well. Ethiopian Airlines in the last seven years has grown seven fold worldwide. With Air India joining Star Alliance, we have already signed and expanded our codeshare cooperation with Air India. We are optimistic that through this business and leisure traffic will increase.”
