Business trends Performance figures for the government-owned Ethiopian Airlines are available in their Annual Reports and occasional press reports. Available recent trends are (as of year ending 30 June):
Management and ownership The airline, which is wholly owned by the
Government of Ethiopia, The airline continued the acquisition of Western, rather than Soviet aircraft, despite the links between the communist government and the
Soviet Union, purchasing the
Boeing 727 in 1979 and the
Boeing 767 in 1984. Despite famine, unfavourable exchange rates, and general economic disarray, the airline managed to retain its reputation, particularly in the provision of maintenance and training. The
Financial Times noted that it managed to remain one of the most profitable airlines in Africa throughout the decade. Despite the violent overthrow of the communist government by the
Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front in 1991, the airline managed to post a profit for the fiscal year. In 1994, 40 top executives including the general manager Capt. Zelleke Demissie were fired after they signed a letter rebuking a government report, and a new general manager from outside the industry, Ahmed Kellow, was appointed. The airline would regain operational independence when longtime company veteran Bisrat Nigatu was appointed to the top post in 1997, and remained fiscally sound, despite disruptions caused by the
Eritrean-Ethiopian War. The CEO at the time suggested other African states like Nigeria purchase a minority stake in the airline. In October 2020, the Ministry of Finance postponed the planned privatisation of the state-owned airline. The current CEO is Mesfin Tasew, who was appointed by the airline's board of directors on 24 March 2022. Mesfin has been working at Ethiopian Airlines since 1984. He also was the CEO of
Asky Airlines, a strategic partner of Ethiopian Airlines. Before that,
Tewolde GebreMariam served as the airline's Group CEO from 2011 until his resignation in March 2022.
Organisation The Ethiopian government reorganised the airline as a fully owned aviation holding group in July 2017. The aim was to maximise efficiency, enhance customer service to a global standard, and ease longterm planning. The initial group consisted of: The Ethiopian Airports Enterprise (EAE), the Passenger Airline company, Cargo Airline, and Logistics Company, Ethiopian Aviation Academy, Ethiopian In-flight Catering Services, Ethiopian MRO Services, and Ethiopian Hotel and Tourism Services. The MRO Services is the largest such operation serving the continent and the Med-Eastern region; fully accredited by
FAA and
EASA. The Cargo and Logistical division is expanding to increase annual capacity to 1.5 million tons. Ethiopian Aviation Academy (now upgraded to Aviation University) inaugurated a second campus for pilot training in
Hawassa city in 2023.
Head office departing
Bole International Airport in 2022 Ethiopian Airlines currently has its head office at Bole International Airport, Addis Ababa, and economist
Paul B. Henze recognised it in 2000 as being "one of the most reliable and profitable airlines in the Third World". In July 2011, Ethiopian was named Africa's most profitable airline for the year 2010 by
Air Transport World, As a long-term company policy, in addition to the carrier's main activities, revenues are also generated by providing aircraft maintenance to foreign airlines, Every year, pilots and technicians graduate from both the Pilot School, inaugurated in 1964, and the Aviation Maintenance Technician School, established in 1967. and the company's net profit for the fiscal year ended 2010-6-30 was million. Its net profit in the 2018/19 financial year rose to 260 million USD, while its operating revenue rose to 4 billion USD – figures unmatched by any other carrier on the continent.
Tewolde GebreMariam, the then Group CEO, told
The Africa Report "Some of the targets we set in 2010 to be achieved by 2025, we achieved by 2016." Having met its 15-year strategic plan Vision 2025 ahead of time, Ethiopian has charted out a more ambitious strategic roadmap called Vision 2035 to further bolster its continuous growth. With this new roadmap, Ethiopian plans to nearly double the fleet size from 145 to 271, and to increase from 133 to 207 international destinations. It has also planned to grow its cargo from 723,000 tons in 2022 to 3 million tons/year. The airline aims to generate 25 billion USD in revenue by the end of the roadmap as compared to 6.1 billion USD in 2022 FY. The overarching goal of Vision 2035 is to position Ethiopian Airlines among the top 20 aviation groups globally. The airline announced in 2020, its plans to build a new 6 billion dollar mega-airport with the capacity to handle 100 million passengers a year. The new airport will be built in
Bishoftu, 38 km south of Addis Ababa. Though existing
Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa has undergone massive expansion in 2019, from just 7 million to a capacity of 22 million passengers per year, it is still significantly below the airline's projected capacity demands. Therefore, the new airport is needed to take the pressure off the existing airport as passenger travel grows.
Addis Ababa Bole International Airport has taken the crown from
Dubai International Airport, in 2018, as the gateway to and from Africa travel. Ethiopian ordered 67 Boeing aircraft Including 737 MAX & 787 Dreamliners at the
Dubai Air Show, in 2023 making it the largest-ever purchase of Boeing airplanes in African history. The order is consistent with the airlines' Vision 2035 roadmap. It has also committed to buy 11 additional Airbus A350-900s with six more purchase rights. The 737 MAX aircraft order came nearly five years after one of the airline's fatal 2019
MAX aircraft crash that led to the grounding of the global fleet. Group CEO of Ethiopian Airlines
Mesfin Tasew stated; "We have renewed our confidence in that aircraft. We believe we have checked and confirmed that the design defect of that aircraft has been fully corrected by Boeing." A 2023 report from Brand Finance, a global brand valuation and strategy consultancy firm, listed Ethiopian Airlines as one of the world's top 50 most valuable and strongest airline brands ahead of
Juneyao Air,
Hawaiian Airlines,
Jetstar and
Spring Airlines. The firm named Ethiopian Airlines "the fastest-growing airline brand globally, (brand value up 79% to US$498 million)" and "Africa's largest airline brand" with
Qatar Airways as its significant challenger (brand value up 23% to US$2.5 billion). in Addis Ababa owned by Ethiopian Airlines
Forging strategic partnerships Ethiopian signed in July 2013 a deal for the acquisition of 49% of the Malawian carrier. The new airline was named
Malawi Airlines. The remaining 51% shareholding held by the
government of Malawi and private Malawian investors. In January 2018, Ethiopian signed a strategic partnership agreement with the Zambian government to assist in the relaunch of
Zambia Airways. The airline has a 45% stake in the airline; the rest of the shares are held by the Zambian government. This move is aimed at developing Lusaka as an aviation hub for Southern Africa and fits with the airline's multiple hub strategy outlined in its 15-year Vision 2025 strategic plan. In February 2018, Ethiopian and its Togo-based regional airline partner
ASKY Airlines formed a strategic partnership with the Guinean government to establish a startup carrier Guinea Airlines by June. This partnership is in line with the airline's 15-year Vision 2025 strategic plan to establish strategic partnerships with many African countries, enabling them to regain market share for travel. It is also in line with the recently launched African Single Air Transport Market. Ethiopian Cargo and Logistics Services has formed a joint venture entity with
DHL, DHL-Ethiopian Airlines Logistics Services S.C. in 2018. The focus of the new company will be providing ground logistics to and from airports, seaports, and the rapidly expanding industrial parks of the region. The company is based in Ethiopia and carries out business all over Africa. The company has opened a container freight station, an 800 sqm facility at
Modjo Dry Port, close to the capital, Addis Ababa. Ethiopian Cargo, the largest air cargo service provider in Africa, is building Africa's largest and first of its kind e-commerce hub at $50 million cost at its facility in
Addis Ababa Bole International Airport. Upon completion, the e-commerce hub will be equipped with an automated sortation system and electronic transport vehicles (ETV) to handle up to 23 million parcels per annum (150,000 tons per year) of shipments ranging from small parcels to boxes, skids, and built-up units. The airline has also partnered with postal firm MailAmericas, a Latin American company, to develop cross-border e-commerce services within Africa and the Middle East using Addis Ababa as a hub. The tie-up will see Ethiopian Airlines offer MailAmericas its air transport services for carrying goods across its network. As part of the partnership, Ethiopian Airlines will gain access to all bilateral agreements and private networks of MailAmericas, enabling it to offer services to customers in Africa, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and other parts of the world. The business growth continued with an announcement, in April 2018, of a planned aerospace manufacturing facility. There is a small existing unit, under Ethiopian MRO Services, that manufactures wire harnesses for
Boeing. The new division, a joint venture with
Aerosud of South Africa, will be capable of designing, and manufacturing, aircraft parts for plane makers. Negotiations are underway with Boeing,
Honeywell,
Airbus, and
Bombardier Aerospace among others in search of clients. Accreditation will be sought from the
FAA and
EASA. The needed human resources will be groomed from the local technical schools and higher learning institutions. In July 2018, Ethiopian Airlines signed an agreement with
German ACM Aerospace to set up a facility that will manufacture and supply aircraft seat covers, safety belts, carpets, and other interior parts. In 2023, The airline has signed a deal with the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC) and the Ethiopian Industrial Parks Development Corporation (IPDC) to build a new hangar in Addis Ababa for aircraft parts manufacturing through a joint venture with
Boeing. The facility will be used to manufacture aerospace parts, including aircraft thermo-acoustic insulation blankets, electrical wire harnesses, and other parts. Ethiopian airlines had inaugurated a manufacturing facility in Addis Ababa in September 2022, to produce insulation blankets for Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in a joint venture with Italy's Geven-SkyTecno. Ethiopian Airlines holds 51% and SkyTecno 49% of the new Joint venture company called "Ethiopian Sky Technologies" which intends to make the aerospace manufacturing company one of the key strategic business units of the airline alongside Ethiopian International flights, Ethiopian Express (domestic), Ethiopian Cargo and Logistics services, Ethiopian MRO, Ethiopian Aviation University, Ethiopian In-flight Catering,
Ethiopian Skylight Hotel, Ethiopian airports, and Ethiopian Ground Services. The site, the largest and the first of its kind in the continent, completed its Boeing B767 freighter conversion in 2022, the first of the airline's three similar aircraft due to be converted. After the start of the Covid pandemic, Ethiopian temporarily converted around 25 of its widebody passenger aircraft into freighters using its in-house MRO capability. The initiative boosted its cargo operations and enabled it to transport around 1bn doses of the COVID-19 vaccine worldwide. Ethiopian Airlines launched a Mozambican subsidiary,
Ethiopian Mozambique Airlines, in December 2018. The carrier competed with
LAM Mozambique Airlines and
Fastjet in the country's domestic market. However, in May 2021, Ethiopian Mozambique Airlines ceased operations indefinitely citing as reason a drastic drop in domestic travel demand due to COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2021, Ethiopian Airlines signed an interline agreement with South African carriers
CemAir and
Airlink to allow passengers to travel with a single ticket and lower fare tickets between points within the carriers' networks. ==Destinations==