Star Alliance member Air China will launch flights from Beijing to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa by the end October, initially offering a three-times a week service. The route will reportedly be operated with a long range Boeing 777. Previously only Ethiopian Airlines operated flights from Addis Ababa to Beijing and three other airports in China. It is expected that the new flights will be code-shared between the two Star Alliance partners with the option to extend the codeshare to Chinese domestic destinations for inbound travelers, while outbound travelers from Beijing may have access into Ethiopian’s Africa network on the same ticket.
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Air China is the second Chinese carrier to launch flights to Africa in recent months, following China Southern’s market entry from Guangzhou to Nairobi, a codeshared operation with SkyTeam partner Kenya Airways, which has been serving this route daily. Like Kenya Airways at the time, Ethiopian is also playing down suggestions that competition has come their way. Tewolde Gebremariam, the CEO of Ethiopian Airlines, has been quoted in various media to have put cooperation between Star Alliance partner airlines at the fore rather than concentrating on the competitive aspects of the new flights.
Until now mostly African airlines served routes to Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland out of Addis, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Mahe and Mauritius and the gradual appearance, under reciprocity rights, by Chinese airlines starting their own flights into the main African aviation hubs is a harbinger of things to come no doubt, as the Chinese economic engagement with the continent continues to grow.
