Ethiopia’s flag carrier, Ethiopian Airlines, is planning to expand to India with new flights and also carry out aircraft upgrade.

Currently Ethiopian flies both to New Delhi and Mumbai twice every day. It also has freighter service to Chennai, Bengaluru, New Delhi and Mumbai.

According to Ethiopia Airlines’ CEO, Tewolde Gebremariam, the airline is having talks with Indian Civil Aviation authorities including Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). “We are looking forward to launch flight operations to Chennai from Ethiopia. We are keenly looking at (flying) passengers from Chennai,” the CEO added.

Ethiopian is aiming to deploy a Boeing Dreamliner plane for servicing the second daily flight to New Delhi, Tewolde added. It is after noticing the spike in demand Ethiopian added a second service to New Delhi from March 2016, he furthered.

Last year, Ethiopia and India concluded a pact which allows carriers of the 2 sides to scale up weekly flight entitlements to 28 from 21. The pact also allows Ethiopia to exchange Bangalore for Kolkata as a point of call.

In addition to this 3 additional domestic code share points exclusively to code share with Air India were also granted for Jaipur, Kolkata and Pune.

According to International Airport Transport Association India’s air traffic grew by 19.4 percent from January to
June in the previous year.

Ethiopian is also looking to commence cargo services in cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.

In the aim of attracting Indian customers, Ethiopian has employed chefs who cater to the Indian taste on its flights to and from Addis Ababa.

Source: Financial Express