Passenger Choice Awards: Throwback with Ethiopian Airlines
Share
Nigusu Worku Wordofa
Regional Director – Americas
Ethiopian Airlines
What has the Passenger Choice Award for “Best in Region: Africa 2014” meant to the Ethiopian Airlines brand?
For Ethiopian Airlines, the Passenger Choice Award for “Best in Africa” meant a real vote of confidence by our customers and their fidelity to the Ethiopian brand. It is one of the most important awards in the airline industry since it is the customers themselves, who rated us based on their overall experience with Ethiopian.
The recognition is also a showcase to the traveling public that Ethiopian is above all a customer-focused airline with global standard service. This surely enhances their loyalty to the Ethiopian brand.
Any new products or services that were launched by Ethiopian Airlines this year that set your airline apart from the rest?
- Continuing with our aviation technology leadership in Africa, we have acquired the first ever B-787 Dreamliner full flight simulator in the continent. The installation and build-up of the full flight simulator has been conducted at Ethiopian main hub in Addis Ababa.
- Pilot training in the B-787 flight simulator has started earlier in March 2015, which made Ethiopian the first in Africa to give full flight simulator training for pilots on this state-of-the-art simulator.
- Ethiopian has also received its 11th and 12th B-787 Dreamliner aircraft with new flatbed seats that offer our passengers the maximum onboard comfort and privacy while increasing the total number of our fleet capability to 78.
- With a view to enhance our customers’ onboard experience and ensure extra comfort, we are retrofitting our business class seats of our fleet with flatbed seats.
- We launched our first flight to Tokyo, Japan in April – the only direct service between Japan and Africa.
- Our tri-continent new service to Dublin and Los Angeles in June, is also the first service linking the two cities with Africa.
Through our 15-year strategic growth plan dubbed “Vision 2025” we aim to reach:
- 10 billion USD annual revenue
- 1 billion USD net profit
- 120 international & 26 domestic destinations
- 140 aircraft
- 22 million passengers
- 820,000 tons of cargo
- 17,000 employees
How does Ethiopian Airlines leverage social media to reach passengers?
Ethiopian uses its social media pages as one means of customer care channel to address customers’ requests/feedback in a timely manner. Available promotional packages, new destinations and ongoing developments are continuously posted to our passengers through our social media pages.
In addition to the diverse merits of the social media platform, Ethiopian uses its social media pages to make the Ethiopian brand more accessible and relevant to a wider audience, boost loyalty among current customers and ultimately drive sales.
Your favorite in-flight entertainment onboard Ethiopian Airlines?
As a matter of fact, we are continually updating our onboard entertainment packages to meet the high expectations of our customers. In addition to the latest movies we have more than 30 in-flight games on our 777 and 787 aircraft, English audio books, English music of all genres, radio shows and music from different nations around the world.
Most of all, the various new Ethiopian albums, traditional and instrumental Ethiopian music and the different African Beats and Blues are peculiar flavors on our IFE.
Voting for the 2015 Passenger Choice Awards is on until June 30, 2015. Take the survey today!