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Air connectivity: IATA calls for action among African states

By BusinessNews Staff on December 20, 2014

The Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Tony Tyler has urged African states to implement the Yamoussoukro Decision (YD), which was a declaration that African countries should open their skies to African airlines.

Tyler said the implementation of YD would enhance air transport in the continent and help airlines in the region to operate profitably, adding that it would also stem competition among these airlines.

Tyler who spoke at the IATA Media Day last week expressed regret that since the ratification of the Decision in 1988, it has been all talks and no action, describing the decision to open the skies by African states as a lofty decision taken many years ago when some other regions were yet to wake up to the gains of open skies.

He said that he has been urging the countries to implement the Decision, emphasising the inherent gains and how it would help to improve air transport in the continent, noting that sometimes a passenger travelling in the region may have to come to Europe to connect flights to another part of the continent.

Also in Lagos last week, the regional head of IATA in Africa and Middle East, Adefunke Adeyemi said it was time Africa nations opened their airspace to each other for economic growth and development that is not fully tapped into, vibrant aviation sector that can compete with continents with developed aviation industry. Despite African countries’ adoption of the Yamoussoukro Decision, the signatories have not fully implemented it and turn around the economy of the continent.

Adeyemi said where African nations have liberalised their air markets, either within Africa or with the rest of the world, there have been substantial positive benefits, remarking that the agreement of a more liberal air market between South Africa and Kenya in the early 2000s led to 69 per cent rise in passenger traffic.

She disclosed that allowing the operation of a low cost carrier service between South Africa and Zambia (Johannesburg-Lusaka) resulted in a 38 per cent reduction in discount fares and 38 per cent increase in passenger traffic.

“Ethiopia’s pursuit of more liberal bilaterals (on a reciprocal basis) has contributed to Ethiopian Airlines become one of the largest and most profitable airlines in Africa. Research has found that on intra-African routes with more liberal bilaterals, Ethiopians benefit from 10-21 per cent lower fares and 35-38 per cent higher frequencies (compared to restricted intra-Africa routes).

“The 2006 Morocco-EU open skies agreement led to 160 per cent rise in traffic and the number of routes operating between points in the EU and points in Morocco increasing from 83 in 2005 to 309 in 2013,” Adeyemi said.
She said to understand the potential benefits of intra-African liberalisation, analysis was conducted examining the impact of liberalising air markets between 12 countries within four sub-regions of Africa: North: Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia; East: Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda;

South: Angola, Namibia, South Africa and West: Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal
“The traffic impacts on the 12 countries range from increases of 51 per cent (Nigeria) to increases of 141 per cent (Algeria). In total, traffic flows between the 12 countries are projected to increase by 81 per cent, from 6.1 million passenger movements currently (in 2013) to 11.0 million after liberalisation (an increase of 4.9 million passenger movements).

This represents several million passengers who can now travel by air, but who are currently unable to do so for reasons of cost, flight availability, or convenience,” Adeyemi said.

She said air service liberalisation is projected to bring about other substantial benefits for passengers, who include fare savings: passengers travelling between these countries are expected to benefit from fare reductions of 25-35 per cent, providing a saving of over $0.5 billion per annum. This has also led to greater connectivity.

“With liberalisation, it is forecast that an additional 17 country pairs will benefit from direct service, so that 75 per cent of country pairs will have direct service; new routes and greater frequencies will shorten the flying time between many cities. For example, in 2013 there was no direct service between Algeria and Nigeria. The most convenient routing available was via Morocco (Algiers-Casablanca-Lagos). The minimum journey time for this routing is 9 hours, but depending on connecting times could be as much as 17 hours. A direct service (which is forecast by the gravity model) would reduce the travel time between Algiers and Lagos to approximately 4.5 hours,” Adeyemi said.

[ThisDay]

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