Trump presidency spells bad news for fast-expanding Gulf carriers

Full article on alarabiya.net

Having pledged to build a wall on the Mexican border, repeal Obamacare, tear up the Iran nuclear deal, and “bomb the hell out of ISIS”, Donald Trump is unlikely to treat civil aviation as an urgent priority when he becomes the 45th US President next year.

However, presuming the Republican’s protectionist rhetoric was not mere bluster, there is little doubt that a Trump administration will soon take aim at the Middle East’s three super-connector airlines.

Dubai’s Emirates Airline, Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways have been in the crosshairs of US aviation groups since January 2015, when lobbyists presented Barack Obama’s administration with evidence of state subsidies totalling $42 billion...

Green skies ahead?

Full article in JPG format

Depending on whom you listen to, the carbon offsetting deal struck at the 39th Assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in October was either an “historic” act of environmental altruism by the aviation industry, or a shameful attempt to “evade responsibility” for the damage caused by flying.

Dubbed the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA), the accord will see countries responsible for the majority of cross-border emissions offsetting their pollution above a predetermined level. States will achieve this by investing in United Nations-approved projects that remove greenhouse gases from the environment, or otherwise mitigate global warming. If fully enacted alongside the Paris Agreement – another UN-brokered deal that covers domestic flying – CORSIA should deliver the industry’s all-important goal of carbon-neutral growth from 2020 onwards.

The need for airlines to play their part in tackling climate change is disputed by almost no-one...

Interview: Abdelhamid Addou, Royal Air Maroc CEO

Full article in PDF format: page 19-21 & cover

When King Mohammed VI appointed Abdelhamid Addou as chairman and chief executive of Royal Air Maroc in February, he fired the starting gun for a new era of growth at the flag-carrier after five tough years of restructuring.

The exact nature of that growth has not yet been finalised – management are promising to unveil a new vision in early 2017 – but, as Casablanca prepares to host the 49th annual meeting of the Arab Air Carriers’ Organisation in November, it is clear that Morocco’s flag-carrier is once again in the ascendance.

“The idea today is based on the new health of the company,” Addou told Arabian Aerospace during an interview at Casablanca’s old Anfa Airport, where the flag-carrier is headquartered...

Somalia's image problem

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News that Somalia’s presidential and legislative elections have been postponed until November came as no surprise to critics of the country’s fledgling government. Twenty five years after the outbreak of civil war, Somalia remains one of the most lawless and unregulated places on the planet. Holding elections in the fractured country was always going to be a messy affair, even with clan elders casting votes on behalf of their communities.

The shaky progress so far made towards normalisation of the political and economic landscape was underscored in a recent article by The Economist, entitled “Most-failed state”, which painted a depressing picture of a nation unable to find its feet and succumbing to an ever-deteriorating security climate.

Yet while the shadow cast by Al Shabaab, the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group, looms large over daily life in the country, Somalis at home and abroad are beginning to challenge the nihilistic narrative that dominates media coverage of their struggle. Angered by what they saw as one-sided, sensationalist reporting in The Economist, Twitter users jumped on the hashtag #CorrectingTheEconomist to highlight Somalia’s slow but steady progress in recent years...

Freight expectations for Somali cargo sector

Full article in PDF format: page 14-16 & cover

While impressive strides have been taken to rehabilitate and grow its economy, Somalia will be heavily dependent on imports for many years to come. That makes cargo a lifeline for the country, bringing humanitarian aid, perishable food and reconstruction materials into the Horn of Africa from around the world.

Kenya’s Astral Aviation is by far the largest player in the Somali air cargo market, having launched scheduled once-weekly flights from Nairobi to Mogadishu in 2012 with a Boeing McDonnell-Douglas DC-9 freighter capable of carrying 15 tonnes. A second frequency was added last year, and chief executive Sanjeev Gadhia expects a third flight to begin in November alongside a new scheduled link to Hargeisa...

Airlines pledge to cough up for cross-border flight pollution

Full article on economist.com

Civil aviation accounts for perhaps only 2% of man-made carbon emissions today. Add in other pollutants, such as nitrous oxide, and its contribution to climate change might be twice that figure. That may not seem much, but the sector is expanding rapidly. Since the 1970s, global air traffic has doubled in size about every 15 years. Rising prosperity in developing countries and massive backlogs of aircraft orders mean that the industry's contrails will continue growing for decades. Without regulation, the world’s airlines will quickly choke its skies...

Interview: Jérôme Maillet Congo Airways Deputy CEO

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Last December, an Airbus A310 freighter ploughed into houses after overshooting the runway at Mbuji-Mayi Airport in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Eight people lost their lives. The disaster came barely four months after loose tarmac slabs on the same runway damaged the stabiliser of a departing Boeing 737-300 passenger jet.

Unfortunately for regular travellers in Africa’s second largest country, incidents such as these are hardly uncommon. The Aviation Safety Network has recorded 24 aircraft crashes in DRC since the turn of the decade, resulting in 167 fatalities. The grim track-record has earned the country a spot in Annex A of the European Union’s aviation blacklist, meaning that all locally-registered airlines are banned from entering EU airspace.

It is precisely because of this worrying background that Air France Consulting agreed to help the Congolese government set up a new flag-carrier – one that would abide by European standards and start mending the country’s tainted reputation for air safety...

Interview: Karam Chand, Royal Brunei Airlines CEO

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Royal Brunei Airlines, the flag-carrier of the tiny sultanate of Brunei, is cautiously returning to growth after completing a five-year restructuring plan led by former chief executive Dermot Mannion.

The new roadmap will see Royal Brunei launch services to the Indian subcontinent, while also expanding in North Asia and potentially up-gauging its short-haul fleet.

It will be implemented by Karam Chand, the airline’s new chief executive, who took over from Mannion in March after serving as chief commercial and planning officer for four years. Speaking to Routes News during the IATA AGM in Dublin, Chand credited his predecessor with putting the flag-carrier on a new, more sustainable path...

Air Djibouti cargo strategy on hold amid logistics security concerns

Full article on theloadstar.co.uk

Air Djibouti is temporarily shifting its focus to passenger operations until air cargo facilities in the Horn of Africa nation are improved, commercial director Ian Patrick tells Loadstar.

The state-owned flag-carrier had launched services in August 2015 with a Fokker 27 freighter, kick-starting the government’s plan to develop a combined sea and air logistics hub. Djibouti is located by the strategically important Bab al-Mandab shipping lane that connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden.

Flights were grounded between November 2015 and August 2016 following the withdrawal of the Fokker, but have now resumed with a Boeing 737-400 passenger jet wet-leased from VVB Aviation Malta. The next three aircraft will also be passenger jets, Patrick confirmed...

British Airways: To fly, to scrooge

Full article on economist.com

Back in the 1990s, British Airways, the nation’s flag-carrier, proclaimed itself to be “The World’s Favourite Airline” in a long-running and hugely successful advertising campaign. Watching its iconic TV commercials from sofas across the country, many Brits—a pint-sized, starry-eyed Gulliver among them—swelled with pride at what was, at the time, a genuinely treasured national asset. Were British Airways to run the same campaign today, it would probably stir a mixture of derision abroad and embarrassment at home...