Ethiopian Airlines to start building new $5b airport this year: CEO

Ethiopian Airlines will start constructing a new $5b airport later this year, its CEO was quoted as saying on Wednesday, as the rapidly-expanding carrier outgrows capacity at its current base in Addis Ababa. The airport, which will cover an area of 35 square km, will be built in Bishoftu, a town 39 km south east of the capital, and have the capacity to handle 100m passengers a year, the state-run Ethiopian News Agency quoted Tewolde Gebremariam as saying. “Bole Airport is not going to accommodate us; we have a beautiful expansion project. The airport looks very beautiful and very large but with the way that we are growing, in about three or four years we are going to be full,” Tewolde said. Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa has a passenger capacity of about 19m passengers annually. Tewolde noted that the price tag of the new airport was higher than the $4 billion cost of building the still-to-be-completed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile, with the projected passenger numbers topping those at Dubai’s international airport He did not give details of how the construction would be funded, nor who would build the new airport.<br/>