Ethiopia Bestowed Top Aviation Accreditation By US

Posted on : Wednesday, 1st October 2014

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has bestowed a Category 1 rating on the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority (ECAA) following several months of examinations.

A category 1 rating suggests effective operational organization, flight safety and air space licensing; all of which are areas that the ECAA has excelled in.

State Minister of Transport, Getachew Mengiste, revealed that this endorsement will allow Ethiopian Airlines to fly directly to the likes of Europe and the US without difficulty. When put in context with the recent annual average growth of 20 percent, it is obvious that good times lie ahead for the Ethiopian Aviation Industry.

Also recently, the Ethiopian Aviation Academy became an Authorized Training Center for the International Air Transport Association (IATA) after following a rigorous process facilitated by the IATA Training and Development Institute and the IATA Regional Office.

By virtue of this accreditation, the academy can deliver certain training programs including the IATA International Travel & Tourism Training Program and Foundation in Travel & Tourism.

Significant funding of the order of tens of millions of dollars have been injected into the academy to expand both the scope and capacity of the academy, according to the CEO of the Ethiopian Airlines Group, Mr Tewolde Gebremariam. Over a thousand candidates currently enroll in the academy per year and plans are underway to increase capacity to four thousand by 2025.

Further moves are in play to further improve services from the Aviation sector. With specific operational fine tuning, the duration of landing and takeoff has fallen to under three minutes at the Bole International Airport according to the Director‐General of the ECAA. Because of this, the airport alone can now accommodate over 200 aircraft in a day.