Ethiopian Airlines said yesterday that it is preparing to hold talks with officials of Boeing in the coming few weeks on issues of compensation. Boeing had announced last week that it was delaying the delivery of Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircrafts for technical and logistics reasons.

Girma Wake, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the airline, told The Reporter that the latest delay had pushed the original delivery time of the aircraft by 15 months and it would affect the company in many ways.

"Firstly, we will be forced to lease new aircrafts to open new routes and expand the exiting ones. And there're no companies that will lease their planes for 15 months so we will be forced to acquire them for a lease period of more than 5 years," Girma said.

He added that leasing planes will help the airline cope up with aircraft shortages for the time being but will drastically increase the number of planes that it operates once the Dreamliners began arriving, thereby increasing the company's costs.

"In the second place, the planes that we will lease are old ones that are not fuel efficient. This is going to be a challenge coupled with the global jet fuel price hike,"  the CEO told The Reporter.    

According to Boeing, the first flight of the ultra-modern aircraft will be in the fourth quarter of 2008 while the target for delivery of the first plane to Japan's All Nippon Airways is now in the third quarter of 2009.

Following the latest delay, Girma said that while Ethiopian will hold talks with officials of Boeing in the coming few weeks, it is also looking for companies that lease planes.

This is the third time for Boeing to announce a delay on the delivery of  the Dreamliner, an aircraft for which it has received 802 orders which makes it the plane maker's fastest selling model.  

Zemedeneh Nega, Managing Director of Ernst and Young, which is the major consultant of the airline, told The Reporter that Boeing's delay will affect not only Ethiopian Airlines but also all carriers because acquiring an aircraft needed long-time planning.

"As the planning defaults when the delivery is delayed, it will have an impact. This problem is further aggravated by the fact that it is neither easy to buy or lease an aircraft nor shift to another manufacturer in a short time," Zemedeneh added.

Boeing blamed slow progress on assembly and continuing problems with supplies for the delay. Girma, in line with Boeing's assertion, said, "The plane's parts are manufactured in different countries. So, the problem is that all of them cannot be delivered on time. That's a logistics problem," the CEO explained.

Despite all these problems, however, the airline has the prospect to meet its target of becoming a billion dollar business by the year 2010, according to Zemedeneh.

"Last week alone, four big airlines have gone bankrupt due to the global fuel price hike and the slowing US economy. But Ethiopian will overcome these challenges as its passengers and revenues are growing substantially," he concluded.

Dreamliner will be Boeing's completely new aircraft since 1995. "It takes advantage of new technology that allows much of it to be made of plastic composites instead of aluminum,  which makes it lighter and consume less fuel," Leul T. Medhin, the airline's Acting Public Relations Officer, told The Reporter.

By Elias Meseret