Ethiopian Airlines begins flights to DRC, Madagascar

Africa’s largest aviation group, Ethiopian Airlines, on Tuesday inaugurated three new flights to Kisangani and Mbuji Mayi in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Nosy-Be in Madagascar.

Mr Tewolde GebreMariam, the Group Chief Executive Officer, Ethiopian Airlines, said the move was part of the airline’s objective to increase connectivity within the African continent.

“We are very happy and proud to be a very strong instrument in connecting Africa in line with our motto of the last 70 years – Bringing Africa together and closer to the rest of the world.

“When we open these three destinations, we may look at only the direct services we are going to operate between Addis and these destinations.

“But what is more important and may not be visible is that we are connecting these destinations with more than 100 destinations all over the world.

“Kisangani and Mbuji Mayi will be two additional points to the already three points we fly in the DRC; so we are now flying to Kinshasa, Goma, Mbuji Mayi, Kisangani and Lubumbashi.

“The beautiful Island of Nosy-Be is a popular tourists destination for Europeans.

“Since we announced that we are going to connect it with our network in a direct service, the Madagascar Embassy in Addis has been overwhelmed by visa requests,’’ GebreMariam said.

According to him, this showed that the trend is changing as Africans are visiting African friends for tourism, which is very encouraging development.

He said that with the launch of the new flights, Ethiopian now serves 58 destinations in Africa and more than 100 destinations globally,

GebreMariam said that with this it has solidified its stature as a veteran Pan-African airline with the largest number of destinations in the continent.