Quantitative Revenue Management and Dynamic Pricing in African Aviation: A Case Study of Ethiopian Airlines

This paper examines how quantitative forecasting, pricing, and revenue-management techniques can support strategic decision-making at Ethiopian Airlines Group, Africa's largest carrier, in the period following the COVID-19 pandemic. Using verified figures drawn from Ethiopian Airlines Group's own annual reports and corroborating press disclosures, the paper documents a structural shift in the airline's business mix: a pandemic-era pivot toward cargo revenue, followed by a strong multi-year recovery in both passenger volume and total revenue between fiscal years 2020/21 and 2024/25. Building on this empirical base, the paper proposes an Integrated Revenue Management Decision Framework (IRMDF), a four-layer architecture spanning demand forecasting, seat and capacity optimisation, stress-testing, and continuous monitoring, as a structured approach for managing pricing and capacity decisions under compound uncertainty (fuel price volatility, exchange-rate instability, and regional competition). The paper deliberately separates verified empirical findings from illustrative scenario analysis and proposed frameworks, a distinction often blurred in practitioner-oriented case writing. It concludes that passenger load factor and fuel cost management are the two highest-leverage levers in the airline's profitability equation, and that cargo, while no longer a pandemic-era emergency measure, remains a strategically significant but incompletely disclosed revenue stream that merits further primary research.