Managing Director, Ethiopian Airlines International Operations, Mr. Esayas Woldemariam Hailu, has decried the lack of cooperation among Governments of African countries noting that the trend had created a loophole for foreign carriers to continuously exploit the continents aviation sector to the detriment of local airlines. Hailu spoke in an interview with some Nigerian journalists at Addis Ababa, Ethiopian, recently, where he lamented that despite the agreement between the continent’s governments on open sky policy with other foreign countries, its implementation had been skewed in favour of foreign carriers.

He said the open sky policy had only ended up allowing western and middle east carriers to benefit more by airlifting over 80 per cent of air travellers out of Africa, leaving local airline operators with the abysmal 20 per cent. “Some of the African countries grant free sky to other airlines that are operating from out of the continent, but unfortunately, such rights are not given to their fellow African carriers,” he said.