Total, Shell win EAL fuel contract

By Eskinder Michael

Total and Shell the two most prominent fuel companies in the world have won the bid to supply jet fuel to Ethiopian Airlines it was learnt.

The two companies won a three-year contract to provide jet fuel for East Africa 's biggest airlines after the first three-year deal expired on October 31, 2006. The new deal is put into effect as of November 1, 2006.

Ethiopian expects the two oil companies to provide it 205,400,000 lt jet fuel at the price of 5.80 birr per liter each year for the coming three years. The amount could vary depending on the number of flights and addition of new destinations.

Last year only, the two fuel companies provided the airlines 160 million litres of jet fuel for its domestic and international flights.

The airline spent 284 million birr for fuel in the previous fiscal year 2004/05 as fuel prices hiked in the past year as high as 72 dollars per barrel. One of the largest airlines in Africa, Ethiopian made its maiden flight to Cairo on April 8, 1946. Ethiopian provides connections to 47 destinations spread around the globe including 28 in Africa via its Addis Ababa hub.

The number of passengers has increased from 1.55 million in 2004/05 to 1.76 million in 2005/06 showing a 13.7% increase. However, mostly due to the increase in fuel prices, the airline has not made staggering profit as in the last fiscal year. The 133.6 million birr profit in the 2005/06 fiscal year looks like a modest profit compared to the 2004/05 fiscal year's 309.9 million birr. Ethiopian Airlines recently won the African Aviation Award as “African Airline of the Year 2006”. The key criteria for Ethiopian Airlines to have won the African Aviation Award from African Aviation Journal include its financial performance and overall profitability, passenger growth, route network expansion, fleet modernization, in-flight services, and overall customer care.

Deepening its services within Africa, Ethiopian Airlines flies twice daily to Dubai, eleven times to Lagos, eight times to Accra, daily to Khartoum and Johannesburg, six times to Dakar, five times to N'djamena, and four times to Lome effective October 29, 2006.

Ethiopian also changed its passenger services management system from SITA to the new Sabre system as of November 3, 2006. The new passenger services management system has ten different applications which will enable Ethiopian to effectively and efficiently manage its customer services chain starting from booking to baggage handling.

Ethiopian has introduced a new Frequent Flyer Management System and launched its ShebaMiles on Ethiopian's Web. As part of the implementation of the Sabre Passenger Management System (PMS), ShebaMiles has been transferred to the SABER FFP system, Traveler Loyalty, effective October 2, 2006. Traveler Loyalty is a web based system that allows members to access their account through the website.