By Our Correspondent
October 14, 2021: After a challenging 18 months post the Covid pandemic, it looks like the African aviation industry may be looking at spreading its wings again and is set to revive itself and remerge stronger through mutual cooperation.
Taking a leaf out of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and SAATM or the Single African Air Transport Market in place, both of which are aimed at the liberalisation of air transport in Africa and economic growth, Africa’s air carriers are now looking at forging mutually beneficial ties to boost intra-Africa air connectivity.
Intra-African air connectivity has remained a challenge for the region and developing a pan African network is becoming more imperative by the day, in a bid to connect more areas of the continent and to boost trade and economic activity and lift people out of poverty. This and more such topics were under discussion on Wednesday (October 13) at the popular CAPA Live series hosted by a leading resource for global aviation news and research – CAPA Centre for Aviation .
While speaking about mutual cooperation, recovery paths for the sector post the pandemic and how partnerships will yield increasing benefits to the region in the future- Allan Kilavuka who is the Group MD and CEO of Kenya Airways told Richard Maslen, director of Maslen Aviation Consultancy, “South African Airways is a very strong brand and so are we. And we believe that by being apart we tend to fragment the market a lot more, but by being together and by cooperating, we consolidate the market. There is the benefit of the customers to begin with and the benefit of two airlines and the economy in Africa as well. So we have signed the Memorandum of Cooperation with South African Airways to see what we can do quickly. But the long-term objective of this partnership is to form a pan-African airline that should be able to compete with other large carriers as well.” (L-R) SAA’s interim CEO Thomas Kgokolo and Kenya Airways group MD & CEO Allan Kilavuka
Kilavuka added in the conversation that this was perhaps the beginning of the many such partnerships for co-creating a strong pan African airline network. Incidentally, this development is also key for South African Airways, which has recently resumed flights after it had announced bankruptcy in December 2019 after slashing hundreds of jobs and reports of widespread corruption […]
