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Ethiopian Airlines is committed to developing its human resources in order to maintain its leading role in the aviation industry, according to Tewolde Gebre-Mariam, Chief Executive of the airline.

The airline is concentrating on human resource development in order to address the shortage of skilled human power for itself and other airlines.

Ethiopian has been concentrating on its human resource development for the last ten years but was limited because of the training capacity of its aviation academy which could only train 200 people a year. The airline is now able to train 1,000 people according to its current capabilities but this is still not enough to meet domestic and international demands for personnel which has led the airline to revise its human resource development plan with a view towards increasing the number of people it can train said Tewolde.

With a goal of increasing the island nation’s visibility as a tourist destination, Ethiopian Airlines is planning to add a second daily flight to Seychelles. Kassahun Terefe, the new local head of the airline, recently met with Seychelles' Principal Secretary for Tourism, Sherin Francis, and the Director General for Destination Marketing, Bernadette Willemin, and discussed ways to increase the visibility of Seychelles and boost sales for Ethiopian Airlines.

Ethiopian Airlines is to improve cargo services to increase foreign trade in the country. The airline is in the process of constructing a cargo terminal with the capacity to handle 1.2 million tons of cargo as part of its ambition to improve the services according to the Public Relations Office of the airline.

The construction of the terminal will be carried out in two phases.

Ethiopian will also plan to construct a cold warehouse in the next four months to aid in efforts to develop cargo services.

Ethiopian Airlines announced that it plans to establish a national carrier in Nigeria, after meeting with the Federal Government and private sector players.

The Ethiopian Aviation Academy announced that it is in the process of a large scale expansion project expected to cost an estimated 50 million US Dollars.

The academy is undertaking the expansion as part of its effort to increase its enrollment capacity to meet the ever increasing demand from trainees interested in its basic and recurrent training programs explained Tewolde Gebre-Mariam, Chief Executive Officer of the airline.

The expansion project will include the construction of buildings and supplying the Academy with computer based trainings, modern training aircraft, simulators, and other high tech facilities he said.