Expects growth in revenue, seeks partners with interest, committment….. Ethiopian Airlines COO
Ethiopian Airlines, Africa’s leading Airline says it generates around 80 million US dollars annually from its Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul, MRO facilities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Speaking with newsmen in Lagos, the Chief Operating Officer, COO, Mr. Mesfin Tasew said the Ethiopian Airlines MRO which was closer to African airlines had enabled them to cut cost, save lots of foreign exchange taking their aircraft to Europe for maintenance a service offered by the Ethiopian MRO.
Mr. Tasew who is charge of maintenance, flight Operations and coordination said, they have many customers from West, East and south African countries.
” today we support several African airlines, I can mention some of them from West Africa our major customers are Asky in Lome,Togo, two carriers in Nigeria, from East Africa, Rwandair, from Kenya Jombo jet, Congo airways, from Cameroun, Camair, from south, Angola, Malawi airline, Lam Mozambique”.
In Nigeria, apart from flying into 4 cities connecting Nigerians with the rest of Africa and the world with affordable air transport service, he said it was also supporting Nigerian airlines by providing affordable aircraft maintenance service which take them to Europe for these maintenance service.
“By doing this, we give them no cost compare to the Europe cost of aircraft maintenance and we are closer to them. The third area is for Line maintenance services, we send our engineers and Technicians to Lagos and we support them to repair their aircraft here”.
” Our MRO revenue is not so big, annually we generate around 80 million US dollars but we want to maximize this because we are developing more internal capabilities on engine components, so our revenue is expected to grow faster”.
Tasew noted that Ethiopian Airlines was willing to partner any Africa countries seeking partnership in this regard, adding that they were ready to establish an MRO facilities in West, Central and Southern Africa.
” But to do that we need partners perhaps with the local knowledge who can work with us”.
Regarding partnership with a Nigerian company, the Ethiopian COO stated that their first concern was interest of the would-be partner and secondly, committment, committment in terms of investment requirement and also leadership.
He emphasized that they must have the capacity to facilitate the local requirements like getting the land, facilitating the local government requirement and should have a track record, good reputation/history.
