ASKY Airlines Bets Expansion on a Hub Near Full

Jul 25 , 2026. By BEZAWIT HULUAGER ( FORTUNE STAFF WRITER )

Ethiopian Airlines is the linchpin of ASKY Airline, holding about 40pc equity and acting as technical and strategic operating partner across fleet, network and operations. The Togo government is pursuing a three-fold airport expansion, apron work finished in June last year, a terminal extension underway and a DoubleTree by Hilton transit hotel rising, with Lomé, the Port of Lomé and the Adétikopé Industrial Platform forming one logistics corridor.

ASKY Airlines has tied the next phase of its growth to the modernisation of Lomé International Airport, the carrier's hub in Togo, where passenger use already runs near 80pc of annual capacity.

A privately-owned pan-African carrier, ASKY grew out of a regional effort to restore air links across West and Central Africa after the collapse of Air Afrique.

Ethiopian Airlines was brought in as ASKY’s technical and strategic operating partner. Its role has extended beyond investment to fleet development, network planning and Airline operations, making it the most important partner in ASKY’s business model. Ethiopian Airlines has held a major equity, with share at about 22pc.

The Airline handled 1.58 million passengers through the Gnassingbé Eyadéma International Airport in 2025, against a ceiling of about two million a year, effectively reaching its limit as it prepares to double its fleet and push into Europe.

The government is pursuing a three-fold expansion of the airport, and ASKY is working with airport authorities and Togo’s government to meet the upgraded facilities with its operational needs. According to Daté D. Tevi-Bénissan, ASKY's commercial director, the apron expansion was completed in June last year, with six additional parking spots planned and three already delivered to support a growing fleet.

A passenger terminal expansion is underway on one side to ease congestion, and baggage systems are being upgraded with new belts and X-ray equipment to cut transit delays. A DoubleTree by Hilton transit hotel is being built to smooth passenger flows.

Together with the Port of Lomé and the Adétikopé Industrial Platform, it forms a corridor meant to support regional connectivity and the densification of ASKY's network, and to hold Lomé's place among the leading aviation hubs in West and Central Africa.

“Planning for a second terminal at Lomé should begin immediately to prevent bottlenecks as ASKY doubles its fleet,” said Hailegebrel Tadese, an African aviation commercial strategy expert and former Ethiopian Airlines country director based in Switzerland, calling the current three-fold expansion “a timely but only medium-term fix.”

According to him, infrastructure should anticipate demand rather than react to it, a lesson that reaches beyond Lomé.

Many of Africa's major airports were designed decades ago for far smaller fleets and passenger numbers, and much of the continent's capacity is now near its practical limit, which explains the wave of terminal extensions, new runways and greenfield airports under way across the region.

The investments, according to Tevi-Bénissan, should improve operational performance, accommodate future fleet growth and sharpen the passenger journey, with the full benefit felt progressively as the terminal work and the remaining parking stands are completed.

Yet he was candid that the upgrades may not keep pace with what is coming.

“Without faster investment in a possible second terminal,” he cautioned, “congestion could cap the Airline's intercontinental hub ambitions within the next decade.”

The warning frames the strategy the Board approved in July, a five-year plan built on growth, operational excellence, customer experience, fleet modernisation and network expansion.

ASKY intends to phase out its Boeing 737-800s in favour of 737 MAX jets, grow the fleet from 15 to 30 aircraft, launch flights to Paris in late 2027 and upgrade to the Boeing 787-9 by late 2028.

Two new Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft arrived this month, the first, registered ET-BCJ, landing in Lomé on July 5, followed by ET-BCK on July 16, each in a dual-class layout of 16 business and 144 economy seats. Alongside the fleet, ASKY is putting up a 100-million-dollar joint-venture maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facility in Lomé with Ethiopian Airlines, and a CAE-powered flight simulator centre is under construction, anchoring the technical base a larger fleet will require.

ASKY is targeting two new destinations a year, with a maximum of three, and has moved several routes to daily service, including Libreville, Brazzaville, Bangui, and Yaoundé. Nairobi and Malabo have gone to four flights a week, Douala to nine, and new point-to-point links have opened, including non-stop services from Yaoundé to Bangui and from Malabo to Douala.

Kano, in Nigeria, is among the destinations planned. The investments, Tevi-Bénissan foresees, will lift capacity, improve schedule reliability and support new routes while strengthening connectivity.

According to Hailegabrel, the planned Paris service and the arrival of the 787-9 will lift passenger volumes and processing demands sharply, and if the existing terminal is not ready, it could become a chokepoint before the fleet expansion is complete.

However, the ambitions run into a financial wall familiar across the continent in trapped cash.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) reported that 1.2 billion dollars in airline funds were blocked globally in 2025, of which nearly 80pc was stuck in African markets, held back by foreign-exchange rules and a shortage of hard currency.

ASKY is occasionally caught by such restrictions on repatriating revenue, in markets such as Gabon and Angola. Tevi-Bénissan declined to disclose country-by-country figures but confirmed the sums remain “significant in some markets” and are being actively managed, with the carrier in dialogue with authorities, central banks and its bank partners.

Hailegebrel called resolving the blocked funds an "economic development imperative", warning that when revenues cannot be repatriated, airlines turn cautious about adding capacity or opening routes, and end up limiting seats and raising fares.

He put the same 954 million dollars at the centre of the problem. The pressure compounds an already stretched cost base, with African carriers facing fuel-related unit costs about 63pc above the global average. Nigeria's Dangote refinery, from which ASKY sources fuel regionally, offers a chance to shorten supply chains, but Hailegebrel cautioned that lasting price relief depends on liberalising fuel markets and improving airport infrastructure.

Policy reform is moving on a parallel track. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a bloc of 15 countries, has reported that aviation taxes and charges can account for 60pc to 65pc of ticket costs in the region. It has mandated a 25pc reduction or removal of various levies from January 1, 2026.

Twelve member states have begun implementation, with Sierra Leone already scrapping a 50-dollar airport security charge. Hailegebrel reads the mandate as the formal launch of a reform process rather than a hard deadline, its success hanging on sustained political will and regulatory coordination across members.

The bigger vision was set out by ASKY's Chief Executive Officer, Esayas Woldemariam, at the African Airlines Association gathering this month online.

“Aviation for Africa is not a luxury but a silver bullet solution for economic integration,” he said.

Esayas believes that for the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) to work, carriers should move toward deeper cooperation and alliances to overcome market fragmentation.

Aviation consultant and writer Yonatan  Menkir, said the airport is approaching capacity and will probably need a second terminal within a decade.

Recent apron expansion, baggage system upgrades and additional passenger facilities have improved turnaround times, Yonatan said. These upgrades can support the immediate increase in operations, although the airport is already operating at roughly 80pc of its annual capacity of two million passengers.

Yonatan said proposed long-haul services could accelerate passenger throughput. These include a potential Paris route using Boeing 787 aircraft.

Beyond airport capacity, Yonatan pointed to airline revenues trapped in markets such as Gabon and Angola. He urged sustained engagement with central banks and governments, matching local revenues with local costs and diversifying market exposure.

He also recommended active treasury measures, including phased repatriation or temporary reinvestment. Collective pressure through the AFRAA and IATA could help unlock blocked funds, he said.

Yonatan described the ECOWAS's January 2026 tax-reduction mandate as a useful target that will need to be implemented in phases.

PUBLISHED ON Jul 25,2026 [ VOL 27 , NO 1369]