(eTN) – The West African airline, ASKY, in which Ethiopian Airlines (ET) presently holds a 25 percent stake and is involved in its management, maintenance, and systems controls, will receive a boost, as more flights are to be introduced between Addis Ababa and Monrovia.
It was also learned that ET will transfer its own operations in Monrovia to ASKY in order to strengthen the start-up airline, give it wider reach and scope, and more progressively expand into the Western African region, feeding and de-feeding from ET arrivals and departures.
This underscores the importance of the West African market to East Africaโs two leading airlines, Ethiopian and Kenya Airways, both of which pursue a very similar strategy to collect traffic from across Africa and route it via their respective hubs in Nairobi and Addis to final destinations, often in the Middle East, the Far and South East, and also to other African destinations, which are comprehensively covered by the two regional African airline giants.
A major difference continues to be the absence of US-bound flights by Kenya Airways, while for many years, Ethiopian has been cleared to fly to Washington DC, a clear advantage in terms of connectivity for American visitors to Eastern Africa and the rest of the continent.