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10
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DURBAN
Daily
Issue 03
Tuesday
22 September 2015
Produced by:
Ali Tounsi, Secretary General of ACI Africa
presented some figures on air safety in Africa,
revealing that between 2006 and 2012 the jet
hull loss rate per million sectors for Western-
built aircraft in Africa was around five times the
global average. However, this had improved to
around twice the global average in 2013 and
in 2014 there had been no hull losses. Tounsi
went on to describe the Airport Excellence in
Safety (APEX) programme that ACI had been
developing with its partners.
Adefunke Adeyemi, Head of Member & External Relations, Africa
& Middle East at IATA presented the results of a study undertaken
by InterVISTAS on transforming Intra-African air connectivity, which
suggested that implementation of the Yamoussoukro Decision
would generate $1.3 billion of incremental GDP, 155,000 additional
jobs, an additional five million passengers, fare savings of between
25% and 35% leading to savings of $500 million, a 75% increase in
direct services, time savings and greater convenience. Countries that
could expect to see a doubling of traffic included Angola (+153%),
Algeria (+141%), Tunisia (+134%), Senegal (+131%) and Uganda
(+115%). Examples of where liberalisation involving African states
had produced significant growth included the South Africa—Kenya
market (70% growth in traffic), Morocco-EU open-skies in 2006
(160% growth in traffic) and Ethiopia’s adoption of more liberal
bilaterals, leading to frequency increases of up to 40% and fares
being lowered by 10-20%. She also showed on a map the range
of services operated in June 2014 within Africa and how there
were “still too many white spaces”. Another slide showed the 45%
premium that intra-African passengers were paying compared with
passengers travelling within Europe. In addition, while global load
factors were now around 78% and in the low 80s for North American
airlines, for African airlines as a whole it was still below 70%.
Debating the issue of Africa On The Rise: How Does Africa Manage its
Growth Safely and Profitably? were: Hussain Dabbas, Africa & Middle
East Regional VP at IATA; Edmund Makona, CEO, Air Zimbabwe;
Tebogo Mekgoe, Chief Operations Officer, Airports Company of
South Africa Limited; Chris Zweigenthal, Chief Executive, Airlines
Association of Southern Africa; Inati Ntshanga, CEO, South Africa
Express; and Dr. Koussai Mrabet, Director, Commercial/Corporate
& Industry Affairs, African Airlines Association (AFRAA). This was a
lively session with representatives of airlines, airports and aviation
trade organisations. Issues discussed included the high cost of
fuel, the problem that many country markets were relatively small
leading to high unit costs as a result of small fleets and subsequent
low load factors, protectionism, South Africa’s recent introduction
of more rigorous screening of children entering the country, the
need for more interline agreements between carriers within Africa,
why African airlines are willing to join alliances with European
partners but seem unwilling to form partnerships with each other,
the Rand’s depreciation against the US Dollar, and the on-going frustration at countries not adopting the Yamoussoukro Declaration
on air transport liberalisation. However, the good news is that 11 countries have signed an agreement (including South Africa and
Zimbabwe) to proceed in small steps along a path that should result in improved open-skies within Africa. It was also suggested that
having 250 airlines in Africa generating just 3% of global traffic was rather too many, especially as according to various speakers only
one (Ethiopian Airlines) was actually consistently profitable.
