Flying in Africa — then fasten your seatbelt, grit your teeth and hope for the best.
That could well be the advice of seasoned travelers familiar with the nightmare of making connecting flights, surprise stopovers and poor scheduling that is strangling trade and tourism on the continent.
Glenna Gordon, a freelance photographer based in Liberia, is well-versed in flights-gone-wrong.
PHOTO: AFP
A return trip to Monrovia from Cameroon once included a “surprise stop” in Libreville and then another in Mombasa, Kenya, in east Africa, crossing the continent “from one ocean to another.”
The trip took about 30 hours.
“It would have been faster to take a pirogue [boat] across the Gulf of Guinea,” Gordon said.
While major international carriers are flocking to Africa for a slice of a vibrant and fast-growing market, local airlines are still hamstrung by complex restrictions between states and government interference 20 years after the “Yamoussoukro Agreement” was supposed to open up the skies.
“Its purpose was to liberalize air services in the continent. It was a great idea, but little progress has been made,” said Anthony Concil, communications director for the International Air Transport Association.
“Without the political will to support the industry’s growth, and the economic benefits that it will bring, the potential for improving connectivity is limited,” he said.
Dubai’s Emirates is one of those expanding fast into Africa and next month launches the first direct flight from west Africa to Asia, from Dakar.
“It is not easy to travel around Africa, that’s for sure,” said Tim Clark, Emirates Airlines president.
“The European legacy has tended to dominate Africa and if you wanted to go from Accra in Ghana to Douala in Cameroon, about a 600 mile [960km] flight, you have to go over Paris, and we see that time and time again,” he said.
Emirates is helping Senegal’s national carrier to relaunch after its collapse last year, which cut many key direct flights within west Africa from the regional hub.
“A good airline with more options of flying has an impact on trade and also on tourism and people moving freely,” said Ibrahima Cheikh Diong, chairman of Senegal Airlines.
According to Concil, 35 percent of goods traded internationally travel by air.
However, with no clear vision by governments to develop aviation as a critical component of Africa’s infrastructure, “the continent pays the price in lost economic activity and higher costs to do business,” Concil said.
Most African airlines are still state-owned and in cases where foreign investment is allowed, it is limited up to 49 percent with no management control.
“Often times, governments are not helping. The industry cannot operate like a normal business due to government intervention. And corruption is a problem in many parts of the continent,” Concil said.
The African airline industry ran up losses of US$100 million in 2008 and last year, but was expected to make US$100 million this year due to strong traffic growth on the back of expanding commodities trade, according to IATA.
While demand in Africa grew 4.5 percent and 5.1 percent in 2007 and 2008, it fell 5.4 percent last year.
“It is expected to grow 13.5 percent this year, which is an exaggeration due to the comparison with an extremely weak 2009,” Concil said.
While better organized highways in the sky are sorely needed, the main priority is still safety in the world’s most dangerous region for air travel, which has an accident rate 14 times worse than the global average.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS