National Airways, a private airline established last year, announced that it was preparing to float shares to the public.
Established with a 10 million birr capital in July 2010, National Airways was licensed by the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority (ECAA) and the Ethiopian Investment Agency.
The airline is planning to provide scheduled domestic flight services, Capt. Abera Lemi, owner and CEO of the company said. The CEO said that National Airways would be the first private airline to provide scheduled flight services.Capt. Abera said that National Airways was dealing with the Ethiopian Airlines to buy five Fokker 50s which the latter had been using for domestic services.
Capt. Abera said that the law that prohibits the use of aircraft with more than 20 seats by private airlines was discouraging. "It has been years since it was reported that the law would be revised," he said.
The captain said that his airline could not provide scheduled domestic flight services with aircraft which have 20 seats. Flight fare collected from 20 passengers could not cover fuel cost. According to Capt. Abera, Ethiopian Airlines used to provide flight services to 54 local destinations but this has dropped to 16. He said that the gap could be filled if private airlines were allowed to use the type of aircraft they wanted.
Abera said that National Airways had leased 45 seater aircraft and they had to take out 25 of the seats to operate between Addis Ababa and Hargeyssa.
Source: The Reporter
