EXPERTS SEEK END TO AFRICA'S AVIATION WOES
AFRICAN aviation experts and their counterparts from Europe, the United States (U.S.) and the Middle East yesterday moved to tackle the challenges facing the aviation sector after identifying air transport as holding the key to economic growth for the continent.
The experts spoke in Johannesburg, South Africa, at the 20th Annual African Aviation Conference and Exhibition, with the theme, 'Achieving successful aviation partnerships' which was aimed at proffering solutions to the myriad of problems confronting African carriers on aircraft maintenance, repairs and overhaul and how to get out of the woods.
The Chief Executive Officer, South African Airways Technical, Musa Zwane regretted that the continent was faced with the dearth of skilled manpower, occasioned by the poaching of the best hands out of the region, stressing that the situation was tragic.
According to him, 'The little skill we had had been transported away and leaves a huge gap on the development. This has affected the sector.'
In his remarks, the Chief Executive Officer, Airlines Association of Southern Africa (AASA), Chris Zweigenthal listed profitability, inability to cope with the rising costs of aviation fuel, otherwise known as JET A1, landing, parking charges, airport taxes, among others as some of the challenges facing African airlines.
He urged governments and airport authorities to encourage growth by assessing the operations of the airlines.
The airline chief disclosed that there was a huge pressure from Europe for African carriers to sign additional frequencies and some anti-progress pacts, including the fifth and seventh freedom rights.
The fifth and seventh freedom rights are rights to carry traffic between two foreign countries on a flight that either originated in or is destined for the carrier's home country.
It enables airlines to carry passengers from a home country to another intermediate country (A), and then fly on to third country (B) with the right to pick passengers in the intermediate country.
Freedoms are not automatically granted to an airline as a right; they are privileges that have to be negotiated and can be the object of political pressure.
Zweigenthal stated that Africa needed to develop successful airlines to become attractive, just as he stated that the continent should strike a balance for air transport liberation.
He, however, noted that safety remained the major challenge for the continent's carriers, lamenting that statistics from International Air Transport Association (IATA), the clearing house for global airlines showed Africa carriers had the worst accident record in 2010.
The Chief Executive Officer of African Aviation Services Limited, who is also the organiser of the yearly event, Nick Fadugba said the prediction by IATA last month that African airlines would break even in 2011 with profits slightly less than the $100 million the region posted in 2010 pointed out that that African airlines faced increased competition from lucrative business traffic from Middle East and other carriers.
He added that African airlines had struggled to obtain optimally-priced fleet financing, as well as aviation insurance.