By Harry Awurumibe, Editor Abuja Bureau
The management of Ethiopian Airlines has strongly refuted the recent allegations by Cable News Networks (CNN) regarding the airlines’ involvement in transporting weapons.
In a press statement issued by the airline, it said Ethiopian Airlines is a multi-award winning global airline which is one of the senior members of IATA and member of Star Alliance for a decade, and which has been providing safe and reliable air transport service to the continent of Africa and the rest of the world for the last 75 years and that has been commended for its humanitarian and commercial operations in good and bad times.
Accordingly, Ethiopian Airlines said it strictly complies with all National, regional and International aviation related regulations.
Ethiopian Airlines while strongly refuting the recent allegations by CNN, confirmed that to the best of its knowledge and its records, it has not transported any war armament in any of its routes by any of its Aircraft.
The airline stated that the mentioned air waybills in the CNN article clearly show that the nature of goods transported on the alleged flights was “Food stuff and Refill” as declared on the document as per IATA standards, adding that the alleged pictures are not known to Ethiopian Airlines.
“We would also like to confirm that we don’t have any employee suspended or terminated due to their ethnic background. There is no employee in Ethiopian Airlines suspended or terminated from our payroll due to their ethnic background. This can be verified from our Human Resources records.
“On top of the four-fold (4X) growth registered in all parameters in the last decade, which repositioned our airline as the leading Airline in the Continent of Africa, Ethiopian Airlines demonstrated unique and top of the line level of creativity, agility, resilience, and speed of decision making in managing the devastating global pandemic crisis.
“Thus, we would like to assure all our passengers and the public that Ethiopian Airlines strictly complies with all International aviation related regulations & standards, doesn’t deviate from any civil aviation regulations in all its operations, it has never been engaged in any weapons transportation and kindly requests correction in this report,” the airline concluded in their statement .
