Africa's air travel industry

Fastjet CEO Ed Winter discusses problems with the air travel market in Africa.

日前，全球航空业领袖在南非开普敦呼吁相关各方应在非洲扩大民航基础设施投资并提高民航安全性，以航空运输业发展推动非洲经济社会发展。突发的韩亚航空事故在带给人们生命凋零的伤痛之余，也让投资者对航空、旅游业产生危机感。受此事故影响，航空、旅游、保险等板块的业绩及股价纷纷下滑！

At times it’s probably a bit more difficult than we thought it might have been, and African airs is a bit like Europe was in the 70s or 80s, everything is controlled nationally by bilateral agreements between countries, a lot of protectionism, a lot of restrictions.

So how are you going to beat them where they have defeated others before you?

Here in Africa, we’re dealing with each individual country, what we can’t do is create a pan-African airline which is all one company. That just won’t work un-liberalized arena such as this. So what we were doing is constructing individual companies, but for the consumer, it will be one product. It’s a bit like a franchise.

It’s exactly a franchise.

If you think about it,

It’s exactly a franchise. You’re selling them the flag and the name.

Most hotel chains don’t actually have many hotels at all. You know, if you are going to a particular brand of hotel around the world, you know what standard you’re gonna get. Now we can do the same with aviation.

That still doesn’t address the problem of how those individual companies are going to solve the issues which have bedeviled African aviation.

We’ve shown two things, I’d say in a very small way in Tanzania. One is that we cannot break within that infrastructure, but also the local smuggle works. 38% of our passengers so far in Tanzania have been first time flyers.

It’s not clear whether Fastjet can ever become the carrier it aims to be, having posted a $56 million loss for the 18 months to the end of last year, the auditors KPMG said they had, in their words, significant doubts that the airline would be able to continue trading. Fastjet have brushed aside the concerns, but are aware of the risks. For now, the airline carries on.

You must have the temperament of a saint to be able to keep your cool during this process, because it must be absolutely, mind-bogglingly frustrating.

In the first few weeks, I found quite a lot of people in the office, things would happen, and they would say, oh, it’s Africa. I bent that phrase, I said I know it’s Africa, that’s where we are working, we know what the problems are, let’s just deal them.