Summary

• Ethiopian Airlines starts a project to build a new airport in Ethiopia.
• The new airport, which will be built in two phases, is expected to be able to handle up to 100 million passengers per year once it is completed.
• Ethiopian Airlines was an important transit carrier for passengers to/from Africa.

Ethiopian Airlines and Dar Al-Handasah (Dar), a building and infrastructure consulting company belonging to the Sidara Group of Companies, have signed an agreement to design and build a new airport.

The new airport will be located in Abusera, Bishoftu, south of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, and the airport serving the city, Bole Addis Ababa International Airport (ADD).

Handling up to 100 million passengers per year

According to the Ethiopian Press Agency, a state-run news agency, the agreement was signed on August 10.

The announcement said the project would be completed in five years, with construction of the airport divided into two phases.

Phase one would involve a terminal building capable of handling 60 million passengers per year and would require an initial investment of $6 billion.

In the second phase, the airport’s capacity will be expanded to handle over 100 million passengers annually.

Mesfin Tassew, CEO of the Ethiopian Airlines Group, described the partnership between the state-owned airline and the consulting firm as a historic milestone.

The CEO praised Dar’s previous experience in planning and managing mega airports. The agreement between the two companies includes planning and supervising the construction of the new airport.

Check financing options

Ethiopian Airlines is currently examining financing options for the project, the statement said. According to Tassew, the airline could finance the new airport with loans.

However, Tariq Al Qanni, Dar’s operations manager, noted that the consultancy is a one-stop shop for such projects and that the company delivers designs in an integrated and comprehensive manner.

“We manage the entire project with a single solution approach, coupled with our extensive experience in planning airports at major air traffic hubs, which makes us unique and well suited to this task.”

According to Dar, the company has worked on projects at Dubai International Airport (DXB) King Abdul Aziz International Airport (JED) and Catumbela Airport (CBT) in Angola.

Currently, Ethiopian Airlines uses ADD as its main hub. The airline’s website about the airport states that it is one of the busiest airports in Africa and can handle 22 million international and 2 million domestic passengers annually.

As a result of the airline’s strategy, ADD has become a major transfer hub for travel to/from Africa. Similar to the big three in the Middle East – Emirate Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways, Ethiopian Airlines facilitates travel between the continent and Europe and North America as well as Asia.

Data from aviation analytics firm Cirium showed that Ethiopian Airlines had 2,811 weekly flights scheduled in August, of which 2,119 were intra-African flights (75.3%), while international connections to Africa accounted for 293 of the weekly schedule (10.4%).

At the same time, the airline operates an extensive network of fifth freedom flights. Data from Cirium shows that in August, Ethiopian Airlines scheduled 78 weekly flights that do not originate in or fly to Africa.

Pictured above are the fifth freedom routes that will continue to offer flights to ADD after the first freedom itinerary closes.