Battle For The African Skies
Ethiopian Airlines adds Pointe Noir service
(eTN) - The battle for the African skies is ongoing, as not long after Kenya Airways (KQ) added Juba to their African destination network – incidentally for some time already in the Ethiopian Airlines (ET) schedule – Ethiopian has now announced a new thrice weekly service to Pointe Noir in West Africa. Information received from Addis Ababa indicates that the airline will be using a B767 for the operation, providing both passenger and cargo space, the latter considered increasingly important for the transportation of palletized cargo, another hotly-contested business segment.
Ethiopian was the erstwhile pan-African airline, connecting the continent via Addis when no other airline was taking these routes very seriously and most were looking to European destinations. A large number of African countries granted ET 5th freedom rights in support of their efforts. However, over the past 10 to 15 years, other airlines, notably Kenya Airways, have also embraced a growing African network to feed traffic into their Middle and Far Eastern destinations from across the continent, and ET has seen KQ in fact overtake them, by albeit a narrow margin, in terms of numbers of African airports served.
Comments
While ET and KQ vie for the largest number of cities served in Africa, ET's frequency and connections to the Middle East and Asia are far more superior to that of KQ's. Also, with cargo, KQ's capacity and ability cannot be compared to that of ET's which operates larger aircraft as well as dedicated freighter service throughout Africa. ET has historically been very modest about growth and expansion, and its latest push has been marred by delays in aircraft deliveries, and in some cases, their own pace of acquiring new aircraft.
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