TESFAYE ALEMU GEBRE

Ethiopian Airlines engineer who kept the fleet flying and taught a street to build planes

Tesfaye Alemu could tell you what was wrong with a jet engine from the far side of the apron, by ear. His colleagues at Bole Airport called it a gift; Tesfaye called it listening, and he told every apprentice that the first tool in any hangar was a pair of quiet ears. For thirty-eight years he kept Ethiopian Airlines aircraft flying through three governments and a dozen aircraft types, with a record he was privately proud of: no fault of his ever left the ground unrepaired.

He was born in 1948 at Debre Berhan, the son of a church deacon, and walked to Addis Ababa at seventeen with a letter of introduction and a cloth bag of dried barley. He trained at the Ethiopian Airlines technical school, joined as an aircraft mechanic in 1970 and rose to senior maintenance engineer in 1983. He worked on Boeing 707s, 727s and 767s, and trained more than two hundred young technicians, a number of whom now lead hangars in Addis, Dubai and Nairobi.

In the evenings and at weekends he turned his compound in Kazanchis into a workshop for the neighbourhood's boys, who built balsa model aircraft with him and flew them from the roof. Hundreds of them passed through, and a surprising number became engineers. He married Almaz Bekele in 1975, and every Sunday after church she made doro wat while he prepared the coffee ceremony, three rounds, never rushed. 'Ayzosh,' he would say to anyone who looked tired. 'Be strong. The coffee is nearly ready.'

Tesfaye died in Addis Ababa in January 2019, aged seventy, after a short illness. He leaves his wife, three children, four grandchildren and a sky full of aircraft he once made safe.

“The first tool in any hangar is a pair of quiet ears.”