The government of Malawi, holding 51 percent of the shares, and Ethiopian Airlines, the erstwhile Pan African carrier, holding 49 percent, have according to information from Addis Ababa finalized the creation of a new national airline in the Southern African country, called Malawian Airlines.
Negotiations had been ongoing for a while and as previously reported did Malawi’s government seek a strategic investor after the financial collapse of Air Malawi, to create a new national airline but one professionally managed and supported by a strong partner. After ASKY in West Africa will Malawian be the second such joint venture, as Ethiopian seeks to assert their continental leadership through both direct expansion across Africa but also through strategic partnerships, which can help feed extra traffic into ET’s long haul network and in turn benefit from ‘de-feeding’ Ethiopian’s traffic to the respective countries into the near region.
In a related development did Girma Shiferaw, Director Alliances and Network Planning at Ethiopian Airlines, give an elaborate overview of what African airlines, and in particular Ethiopian, do to drive tourism forward, when being part of a panel of experts during the just concluded Routes Africa meeting in Munyonyo / Kampala / Uganda, which was moderated by this correspondent. There, as is the case with the airline’s new investment in Malawi, did it come across very clearly that leisure travellers besides business and trade travellers, are not only an integral part but of growing importance to any airline’s success. Watch this space for breaking and regular aviation news from Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean islands.
