Radebe slams inefficiencies of African airlines
May 11, 2004
By Frank Nxumalo
Johannesburg - Economic woes had destroyed smaller African carriers and brought immense pressure to bear on larger operators in the past few years, Jeff Radebe, the minister of transport, told the 17th plenary of the African Civil Aviation Commission (Afcac) yesterday.
Radebe said many of these carriers, whether state or privately owned, had especially suffered from poor financial performance, which included low traffic volumes on intra-African routes, smaller airlines that could not afford economies of scale, high insurance costs, wildly erratic fuel costs and low productivity.
The minister said African air travel was a nightmare of poor scheduling, delays and cancellations on the ground, and the hassle of being forced to make time-consuming travel arrangements to get from one point to another.
"At the moment it is a sad fact that very often the best route from point A to point B in Africa is via Europe," Radebe said.
"It is probably as a result of these problems that African travellers are faced with enormous costs to fly within Africa, costs that far too often are much higher than the cost of intercontinental flight."
He added that poor navigation management had resulted in "serious deficiencies in air traffic control over much of Africa's airspace.
"Heated debates often accompany the analysis of statistics but I do not think that from whatever perspective one looks at the evidence, Africa cannot be satisfied with the safety record as it stands at the moment," he said.
Investment in airport infrastructure and aviation equipment was either minimal or non-existent, giving rise to problems associated with ageing or obsolete navigation instruments on the ground and in the air, poor maintenance and an inability to ensure the use of common safety instruments, which could lead to fatal accidents.
Radebe said both airline operators and passengers also often complained about high African airports charges, which were not matched by corresponding levels of service.
He said a second set of challenges facing African airlines were those that related to international law and the need to comply with aviation conventions and agreements on noise levels at European and North American airports.
Radebe said there was a growing concern over the number of false transport safety alarms.
"If I may use South Africa as an example. Last year the maritime rescue co-ordination centre logged 1 055 incidents but upon investigation, 785 proved to be false alarms. The aeronautical rescue co-ordination centre logged 83 distress calls in 2003, of which 79 turned out to be false alerts," Radebe said.
"Such figures would encourage a spirit of 'cry wolf' where in future genuine calls could be ignored."
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