WTM 2012 encourages home-grown African aviation links

The World Travel Market (WTM) 2012 - which this week has made London the hub of the world's tourism trade - heard that the African continent needs more home-grown aviation links from both low cost and traditional airlines to offset an imbalance in its market.
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The WTM featured a special Airlines Out of Africa session, the panel of which suggested that the vast majority of international services to the continent were from non-African carriers and that African nations need to develop the home market with greater access and participation for national African airlines.

Ethiopian Airlines’ chief executive Tewolde Gebremariam highlighted the fact that the market share of African carriers was a disproportionately small 18%. He said: “We have to work together to seize our fair share, it has to be 50/50 at least.”

He argued that Middle East carriers had been allowed to take advantage of access to individual countries, adding: “African air space is more open to non-African carriers than to African airlines.”