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Ethiopian Airlines updates Asia growth plan
September 13th 2019
Vietnam, Singapore, Japan and China expansion. Read More »
Ethiopian Airlines is planning expansion in Asia, including its first flight to Vietnam. CEO Tewolde Gebremariam told Nikkei Ethiopian wanted to open a service to an unspecified city in Vietnam. Also in Southeast Asia, Gebremariam said Ethiopian would increase its Singapore service from five weekly to daily. The Singapore flights continue to Kuala Lumpur.
Bigger changes are planned for Northeast Asia. In Ethiopian’s largest market of mainland China and Hong Kong, it plans to increase from 36 to 50 weekly passenger flights by the end of 2020. The additional 14 flights will be seven weekly flights to Beijing, bringing capital city service from daily to double daily. Shanghai will have three additional flights, for a total of 10 a week.
An airline spokesperson told news agency, Xinhua, the remaining four additional flights will be allocated across Chengdu, Guangzhou and Hong Kong. But Gebremariam told Nikkei all four would go to Guangzhou. Earlier this year, Gebremariam said Ethiopian would start flying to three new Chinese cities: Chongqing, Shenzhen and Zhengzhou. But there was no mention of any of these cities in recent news.
Elsewhere in Northeast Asia, Ethiopian plans to introduce daily non-stop service to Tokyo Haneda. Ethiopian will end its five-weekly Seoul-Tokyo Narita flight but retain Addis-Seoul. Ending the Seoul-Tokyo continuation will boost the available capacity for Seoul since no seats will need to be allocated for the onward Tokyo flight. The Addis-Seoul non-stop flight was introduced last year, replacing the Hong Kong-Seoul continuing service. There is not a public record of Japan allocating Haneda slots to Ethiopian.
