‘Ethiopian’ set to join Star Alliance early next year
Reporter, Ethiopia
December 5, 2009
Hayal Alemayehu
Ethiopian Airlines will early next year join Star Alliance, a global network of some of the best airlines in the world, which will further boost its performance by providing it with more traffic via code sharing agreements with the members of the Alliance, the public relations department of the airlines told The Reporter.
“Ethiopian and Star Alliance members will feed traffic to each other at Frankfurt,” the airlines said in a statement. “With Ethiopian joining Star, the Alliance will have coverage of 174 countries, more than 1000 airports and 18,200 daily departures.”
While announcing to the press a month ago about the enhanced partnership between Lufthansa and Ethiopian, representatives of the European major carrier had told journalists here that Lufthansa, being the founding member of the Alliance, is facilitating the way for Ethiopian to join Star Alliance early next year.
The enhanced partnership between Ethiopian and Lufthansa will increase the number of flights the two airlines operate between Addis Ababa and Frankfurt to ten times a week from the current eight times a week flight schedule. Next April, Lufthansa will kick-start the additional flight between Frankfurt and Addis Ababa while Ethiopian is scheduled to launch its additional flight via the same route in June.
With Lufthansa flying to almost all destinations in Europe, Ethiopian is significantly benefiting form its code sharing agreement with the European major carrier. Likewise, Lufthansa is benefiting from the partnership agreement as it allows it to provide flight service to a number of destinations in Africa where it currently does not fly by itself or through code sharing agreements it established with other airlines.
With the changed arrival time of Ethiopian flight to Frankfurt planned for the next summer schedules, passengers will have a choice of connecting flights to Lufthansa destinations to Europe and elsewhere. Effective June 2010, Ethiopian will switch to a day flight operation with a morning departure while starting its fifth flight between Addis Ababa and Frankfurt.
While the code sharing with Lufthansa is significantly boosting the performance of Ethiopian, the proposed membership in Star Alliance will further enhance the operations of the national flag carrier.
Ethiopian currently flies to 35 destinations in Africa, seven destinations in Europe and the United States, six destinations in Asia and 10 destinations in the Middle East. It currently operates 29 Boeing aircraft and expects deliveries of five Boeing 777s and ten 787s in 2010 respectively. Including the recent orders for 12 A350s and eight Q400s, Ethiopian will operate one of the youngest and greenest fleet in Africa.
Headquartered in Cologne, Germany, the Lufthansa Group has a total of 120,000 employees of nearly 160 nationalities. Being Europe's major carrier, the airline operates 5,704 weekly flights to 113 destinations in 39 countries in Europe. It operates a total of 6297 weekly flights around the globe connecting 190 cities in 78 countries. The airline has transported over 91 million passengers last year.