Ethiopian Airlines CEO Girma Wake has a lot on his mind after the tragic ET409 accident, but at least the exceeded performance goals offers some consolation from the haunting memories.

Ethiopian Airlines exceeded its "Vision 2010" targets in all but the number of passengers carried, CEO Girma Wake told employees at the Addis Abeba Assembly Hall around Sidest Kilo last Thursday, March 11, 2010.

Ethiopian set "Vision 2010" goals in 2005, aiming at increasing its passenger traffic to three million, its destinations to 50, its operating revenues to 949 million dollars and its operating profits to 92 million dollars.

Driven by this vision, it also planned to increase the number of aircraft it had under its fleet. Ethiopian has 45 aircraft on order, 12 A350-900s from Airbus; 10 787 Dreamliner jets; 10 737-800s; five 777-200LRs from Boeing; and eight Q400 aircraft from Bombardier.

The national carrier reported an operating revenue and profit of 1.1 billion dollars and 92 million dollars, respectively, according to a statement from Wogayehu Terefe, acting manager of Public Relations and Publications.

"This is 122pc and 123pc of what it had targeted to accomplish in 2010, respectively," the statement said.

The number of passengers it transported stood at 2.8 million, 200,000 passengers short of its plan. This number of passengers is, however, higher by 12.3pc from its performance in 2007/08, according to Wogayehu.

Girma referred to the performance of the airline as rewarding. The Assembly Hall was crowded with the employees who came to attend the meeting packed in 10 of the airline's buses. Some had to stand by the entrance of the hall to listen to Girma's report.

He also spoke of the ET409 accident, which occurred on the flight from Beirut to Addis Abeba on January 25, 2010, but he would not say anything about the cause. He told the employees, however, that passengers had not lost faith with the airline, telling the story of a woman who was reluctant to see her husband take a flight in heavy rain, but let him go because he was flying Ethiopian.

Girma begged the patience of the 5,057 employees of the airline on salary increment requests until the airline finalises the case of ET409.

Ethiopian had an incentive package of rewarding 20pc of its profits to its staff, but that came to an end in 2008.