Original Story Published by: Sossina Tafari for Media Africa
Photo Source: ©Nils Nedel/Unsplash
In June 2015, Ethiopian Airlines became the first African Carrier to land at Los Angeles Airport (LAX) opening the skies to passengers to Ethiopia and beyond. In addition to the new service delivered by Ethiopian, the airline was granted the Fifth Freedom status for this route whereby Ethiopian would originate the flight from the US and gain permission to sell tickets from LA to Dublin, Dublin to Addis allowing passengers to deplane in Ireland while the plane made a stop to refuel before the onward trip in both directions. This action gave Ethiopian an additional revenue source to help the route become profitable. The thrice weekly service was serving passengers from the West Coast of the US.
The third flight of Ethiopian connecting North America to Africa came behind Washington DC and Toronto. Both successful routes and recently gaining passengers other than Ethiopian nationals, the airline has enjoyed steady growth and recognition. The airlines membership in Star Alliance allowed it to have some codeshare opportunities mainly with United Airlines. In addition to the benefits rendered through the Star Alliance program, Ethiopian has made smart moves by taking ownership stakes in African airlines that have struggled to gain a footing.
Following the Los Angeles route, Ethiopian announced plans to reintroduce the New York/New Jersey route with the idea of a stop over in West Africa. The objective was to begin expanding and serving the large African population that was living in the North East sector of the United States. Looking to service this population and needing to route the traffic via a West African hub, Ethiopian leveraged its existing hub arrangement in Togo, Lome to serve as a pit stop for refueling, crew change and passenger embarkment handing them off to the ASKY network where Ethiopian is heavily invested. ASKY serves 23 destinations in West Africa and the Western Coast of Southern Africa and is a feeder airline to Ethiopian.
And 18 months ago, Ethiopian announced that the airline would commence flights into Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, this time serving the vast Ethiopian community in the Midwest. It is well known that the third largest aggregation of Ethiopian national’s hail from Minnesota, with neighboring states, including Illinois, contributing a healthy population to make this route viable for Ethiopian.
aspects. That the Ethiopian Nationals will be a loyal customer, that other African Nationals will use Ethiopian to transit to their home countries and lastly, code sharing with Star Alliance partners would expose the carrier to passengers who would normally take European carriers or Middle Eastern Carriers to access African destinations. Ethiopian, by default, had started a popularity war with Turkish Airways and Emirates by leveraging its excellent network in Africa and superb schedule that afforded passengers to arrive in the morning and connect to their onward destinations before 11 in the morning.
So, it came as a complete surprise when Ethiopian announced earlier this week that it is scrapping the LAX route in lieu of establishing a route into Houston, TX! Just one month ago, Ethiopian had made the strategic shift from Dublin to Lome as the designated pit stop for this route, scrubbing Ireland opportunity. In what appears to be a strategy change, Ethiopian Airlines in its prepared statement explained the following. With the LAX route being retired, Ethiopian intends to establish the Houston to Addis route via a West African stop, possibly Lome or Abidjan. In addition, Washington DC will increase service from 7 flights to 10 flights, with the additional 3 flights being a nighttime take off from Washington DC and transiting through, Côte d'Ivoire, Abidjan, with the New York/New Jersey hub splitting to two airports where 3 flights take off from JFK and 4 from Newark and increasing Chicago from 3 flights per week to 5 flights. All these changes are made with the hopes to increase traffic to Ethiopia and beyond and taking airlines such as Turkish Airways, Emirates and Qatar Airways head on to be the largest, most efficient, most networked carrier serving Africans and visitors of Africa.
The CEO of Ethiopia, Mr Tewolde GebreMariam offered the following remarks in conjunction to the recently announced changes, “The U.S. is among our most important markets owing to the presence of a large African community and growing business and tourism ties with Africa. Our new route structure with additional frequencies to multiple gateways and the opening of new route to Houston are aimed at responding to the market demand and availing best possible connectivity to over 60 African destinations."
"Onboard our flights, our customers will continue to enjoy our premium and award-winning service on the most technologically advanced commercial aircraft, the Boeing 787. In line with our Vision 2025 strategic roadmap, we will keep on expanding our U.S. and African network so as to facilitate people-to-people ties and the flow of investment, trade and tourism.”
The 73 year old airline commands one of the youngest fleets and currently operates 89 aircrafts servicing 95 destinations. With strategic hubs in Togo, Lome and Malawi, Lilongwe; they seem to be poised to dominate and be the airline of choice for the continent. With a recently revamped website, a working app for easy access to flight information and loyalty program (Sheba Miles), Ethiopian is quickly transforming into an airline that could compete with airlines from the Middle East and Europe. Recent deterioration in customer service has also taken a turn for the better where phone calls are answered and/or returned! Amazing!
Now it is time for Ethiopian to start wooing those customers who have publicly condemned the airline for its poor service and who have defected to be patrons of rival airlines – me included!
