Ethiopian Airlines (Ethiopian) is looking to drive travel to Africa and expand its international presence with two new codeshare agreements involving Air India and Air Nippon Airways (ANA), respectively.
Ethiopian, which already has an existing codeshare agreement with Air India on the former’s flights between Addis Ababa, Mumbai and Delhi, will add its code on Air India’s domestic network to Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Bangalore, effective immediately. Reciprocally, Air India will place its code on Ethiopian-operated flights from Addis Ababa to Kigali, Entebbe, Dar es Salaam, Harare and Nairobi.
Under the codeshare, passengers of both airlines can book fares to the expanded African and Indian network under a single itinerary.
Meanwhile, Ethiopian has also finalised plans for a new service to Tokyo Narita – to be launched from April 2015 –, in partnership with fellow Star member All Nippon Airways.
Operating thrice-weekly, the new service will represent the only direct connection between Africa and Japan. As the operating carrier, Ethiopian will be deploying its fuel-efficient Boeing 787 Dreamliner on the route.
“As the only direct service between Africa and Japan, our flights to Narita will give our customers the best possible connectivity options and will be critical role in enabling greater people-to-people, investment, trade and tourism ties between Africa and Japan,” said Ethiopian’s chief executive Ato Tewolde Gebremariam.
Flight ET672 will depart Addis Ababa every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 2215, and arrive in Tokyo at 1930 the following day. The return ET673 service will then take off again from Narita at 2045, before touching back down in Adidis Ababa at 0600 the next day.
For more information, visit ethiopianairlines.com, airlindia.in and ana.co.jp
Clement Huang
