From April 2010 and June 2010, respectively, Lufthansa and its codeshare partner Ethiopian Airlines, will each offer one additional flight per week between Frankfurt and the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.  Passengers of both airlines will then be able to choose from a total of ten non-stop services per week, with reciprocal codesharing. The improved, jointly operated services are in response to the growing demand for air travel between East Africa, Europe, America and Asia.

At the same time, flight departure times will be better coordinated so as to offer customers a wider choice of departure times and days.  From next June, Ethiopian Airlines and Lufthansa will stagger their flight departures: Lufthansa will be offering flights to Ethiopia via Frankfurt route during the day, as before, and Ethiopian will offer a night flight. In the opposite direction, Lufthansa will operate a night flight from Addis Ababa, and Ethiopian will fly during the day. The additional new flights will give passengers a choice of two departure times on three weekdays.

Since December 2008, Lufthansa and Ethiopian have been offering connecting flights from Frankfurt and Addis Ababa to other destinations that can also be booked as codeshare flights. With the introduction of the 2010 summer timetable, improved and optimised departure times for connecting flights from Addis Ababa will enable passengers arriving in the Ethiopian capital in the early evening to transfer seamlessly the same evening to codeshare flights operated by Ethiopian to Kigali (Rwanda), Entebbe/Kampala (Uganda), Nairobi (Kenya), Dar es Salaam, Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar (all in Tanzania). These destinations of Ethiopian Airlines will ideally complement the existing codeshare services operated in East Africa by the Lufthansa Group airlines SWISS and Brussels Airlines. From next summer, thanks to the changed arrival time of the Ethiopian flight, passengers will have a greater choice of connecting flights to Lufthansa destinations worldwide.

“Our flight network in Africa is growing steadily. Here, our cooperation with Ethiopian plays an important role, particularly with regards to our presence in East Africa,” said Thierry Antinori, Member of the Lufthansa German Airlines Board Marketing & Sales. “Our expanded and harmonised flight schedule to Ethiopia provides better connections for our passengers in Frankfurt and Addis Ababa.” From next summer, Lufthansa flights to Addis Ababa will no longer continue on to Sana’a, the capital of Yemen. As a result, the return flight from Addis Ababa will be able to depart earlier in the evening. From 30 March 2010, Lufthansa will fly to Sana’a via Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.

As the two airlines’ frequent flyer programmes have been harmonised since October 2007, members of the Lufthansa Miles & More programme as well as of Ethiopian Sheba Miles can earn and redeem miles on any of the partner airline’s flights.