African nations must clean up the continent’s poor air safety record tarnishing the reputation of all African airlines, including those with impeccable records, regional airline executives were told at the weekend.
Although there had been some improvement over the last few years, Africa’s air safety record remained nine times worse than the rest of the world, International Air Transport Association regional vice-president Mike Higgins said.
“The most pressing problem for African aviation today is safety,” he told the Airlines Association of Southern Africa’s annual conference in Maputo.
“In 2011, the continent experienced one accident for every 305 000 flights using Western-built jet aircraft. That is an improvement over 2010, when there was one accident for every 135 000 flights, and over 2009, when the rate was one accident for every 100 000 flights. So the trend is moving in the right direction.
“But in 2011 the global industry recorded an average of one accident for every 2.7 million flights. Despite improvements, the safety record for Africa was nine times worse. That is not acceptable.
“It should be as safe to travel by air in Africa as it is in any other part of the world,” Higgins said.
Fortunately, Higgins said, recent developments indicated that governments had the political will to change the situation for the better.
Earlier this year the International Air Transport Association and other air industry organisations drew up the Africa Strategic Improvement Action Plan to bring the continent’s safety record in line with the global average by 2015.
Higgins noted that 17 African airlines remained on the EU’s list of airlines banned from flying into Europe.
“Even African carriers not on the list suffer the reputational damage of a list that is so dominated by African names.”
Higgins also appealed to Southern African carriers, who were among the best, |to spread their expertise and best practice methods throughout the continent.
The conference also heard that SA was likely to face a serious shortage of pilots within the next few years because local airlines cannot match the salaries being offered by international carriers, Comair chief executive Erik Venter said.
He also warned that several smaller African airlines could be marginalised soon unless they took unified action to protect routes from being taken over by Middle Eastern carriers.
“I think we will see a serious shortage of pilots in SA once economic conditions begin to improve.”
SA pilots were paid in rand, while foreign carriers offered dollars, so local airlines would come under increasing pressure to match these packages.
“So I think it’s inevitable that we will have a drain on pilots,” Venter said.
Safair chief training captain, Costa Vouros said the draining of skilled flight crews from SA was a long-standing problem and it was important to find ways of retaining these skills.
“But we just cannot sustain the salaries being offered in the Middle East,” said Vouros.
