Vision 2025: Ethiopian Airlines unveils plans to expand its fleet

Ethiopian Airlines says its progressive goal is to expand its fleet and enlarge its network. As part of “Vision 2035” plans, the airline will introduce more than a hundred new aircraft to its fleet.

BusinessTech Africa has learned that the airliner also plans to add more cities to its network, totalling its destination network to more than 200 by 2035.

As part of the Star Alliance, Ethiopian is currently the largest airline in Africa and has a sizeable operation between Africa – Asia Mesfin Tasew, CEO of Ethiopian Airlines – spoke to the Ethiopian News Agency about the carrier’s strategic plans to grow.

“In vision 2035, we have aimed to nearly double the number of destinations that we will be flying by increasing the number of destinations from 131 today to 207; and to cover this expansion, we have planned again to double the number of aircraft in our flight from 140 to 271,” he said.

“We have planned to carry 65 million passengers and 3 million tons of cargo. We aim to generate 25 billion USD revenue by 2035.”

According to SimpleFlying, the new plan comes as the airline has achieved its goal for 2025 and the CEO added that vision 2035 would sustain the carrier’s fast and profitable growth.

Based in East Africa, Ethiopian will reportedly make a final decision on what exactly its fleet growth will entail in the coming months.

“Currently, we are conducting a fleet evaluation on the narrow body side for 100-seater aircraft: the Airbus A220 and Embraer 195 E2,” the CEO said.

The carrier will welcome its 19th Airbus A350 to its fleet by the end of the month. In July 2016, the carrier became the first airline to operate the A350 in Africa.

It has come to the attention of this news website that this past summer, Ethiopian confirmed that it upgraded four existing Airbus A350-900 orders to the larger A350-1000 variant.

The carrier is also looking to add more freighter aircraft to support its cargo operation and it is reported that there are 14 cargo planes in its fleet consisting of Boeing 737-800BCF, 767-300BCF, and 777F models. With the A350 already in its fleet, Tasew said the airline plans to consider the A350F.