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Cameroon Airlines: The Case Of Another Fail National Carrier By Elie Smith eliesmith@yahoo.com
As the 1960s brought the wave of independence around the continent of Africa that is also how the massive creation of assertive national identities followed. Like the independence of most African countries that it is now clear was premature, so to are most of those hallmarks of national sovereignty which they created.
Around the continent, national airlines , shipping lines and other companies with no feasibility studies carried-out, were created and bank rolled by the new states and its gave the illusions of success.
Most of those products of foolish pride disappeared some years later, while others for the long lasting ones, it existed for twenty years or more before cracks at best started appearing and at worse, monumental collapsed were recorded on the superstructures.
But not all African countries got carried away with the trend. Some countries on the continent, mostly French-speaking ones and at the instigation and supervision of France created a multinational air carrier.
It was a rare example of regional and extra regional manifestation of African unity. Sadly though, the story of the French-speaking pan African Air liner, Air Afrique was too good to last longer than necessary.
Air Afrique struggled to survive and when the governments financing it went bankrupt and gave up the ghost, like most on the continent, the pan African airline disappeared leaving behind thousand of staff with unpaid salaries. Today in Africa, only a selected club of countries have succeeded to maintain beneficial national carriers.
Security and National Pride
In that very selective club, only Ethiopia and South Africa are surviving with ease. The rest are breathing with a mixture of private and national therapy, while others like Nigeria, which has gone fully private, now has a new and efficient airline called Virgin Nigeria.
On the other side of the coin, there are still some nations that are recalcitrant and are struggling to keep their airlines that apparently are the only thing which gives them a semblance of existence.
Such measures are proving suicidal not just to those states that keep spending in lost making companies, but also to those who use them as means of transportation. Some of these recalcitrant states that are still spending colossal amount to prop up their national carriers are Cameroon, Gabon, Congo and others.
Nevertheless, experience elsewhere has shown that, airlines that are run on approximate management and national pride can be dangerous to those using their services.
The August 16th 2005 aeroplane crash over Venezuela that took away the lives of 152 French citizens of Martinique origin, on board a Colombian company called West Caribbean Airways is one of the many pathetic examples. Cameroon Airlines has in the past registered fatal incidences and some equally lucky ones which have nonetheless made the carrier to be amongst the most dangerous in the West African sub region use its services.
However in spite repeated false notes, it has never occurred to the state of Cameroon to look for long lasting remedies to the security and safety of its ailing airline. Ad hoc solutions have remained dominant in the operations of Cameroon Airlines until September 16th 2005, when it was banned from flying it only lucrative extra continental route: the Douala-Paris line.
Reactions
This ban instead of giving the Cameroonian officials an excellent modus-operandi to rectify its wrongs, it on the contrary produced irate reactions which were on the periphery of paranoia.
Cameroon’s minister of Communications Pierre Moukoko Mbonjo reacted with a dose of self control, which however betrayed the anger of the government. Meanwhile, the most violent reactions came from the head of the Trade Union and staffs on the ground at the main airports of the country; namely Douala, Garoua and Yaoundé.
Their anger was directed at the French national carrier, Air France that is a competitor to Cameroon Airlines on the Douala-Paris route. While Air France is a shareholder in Cameroon’s national carrier to the tune of 3.57% and the remaining 96% held by the state of Cameroon, this according to Air France sources. However, these figures are disputed, a proof is that, the web site of Cameroon Airlines claims that, Air France’s stake in their company is 30% and that of the government of Cameroon 70%.
Be that as it may, it is not clearly certain at this stage whether the ordeal of the national pride of Cameroon is caused by Air France; these assertions are contrary to claims made by a certain section of Cameroonians and their Press. Even though it must be acknowledged that, in businesses such as those of airlines, cut throat and not so orthodox practices are always used in a bid not just to outplay rivals, but extinct them out of the market place all together.
Nonetheless, the combined critical vitriolic from members of the Cameroon Airport Authority, Trade Unions and the government who singled out Air France as their whipping boy was not surprising, but it was also not warranted. This is because; it showed their lack of prevarications in giving responses in times of difficulties.
Cause of Suspension
Prevarication was really justified from the Cameroonian side, for in the communiqué made public by DGAC( Direction Generale de l’avition Civile), the apex body charged with monitoring and control of airport safety in France, whose ruling can’t be judged partisan, it pointed out clearly why Cameroon Airlines was banned from France. Its even went further to enumerate the charges in which Cameroon Airlines was found guilty.
In the counts filed by DGAG against Cameroon Airlines, it noted the recurrent divergences in basic aviation norms that the airline has repeatedly failed to respect. More so, the communiqué also pointed out that, several working sessions held between the management of the Airline and officials of DGAG has proved wasteful, because none of the mutually agreed and accepted recommendations were ever implemented on the aircrafts of the Company.
The decision of DGAG was a sigh of relief to aviation experts who were wondering why Cameroon Airlines barred from other major European airports such as London ,Heathrow or Gatwick and Zurich ,Switzerland was still allowed in France.
Unjust as it might have seemed to some Cameroonians, the measure was a good one to passengers and would have brought in some respect to the West African sub region at large, known to be one of the worse places in Africa to use the services of any aviation company.
What has instead surprised aviation experts recently is the lifting of the ban imposed on Cameroon Airlines, which Sofravia, an independent airline auditing and safety firm based in Paris said the ban was not worth it in the first place.
According to this firm, the inspections carried out on Cameroon Airlines planes by DGAG revealed serious problems that nonetheless never necessitated the harsh measured taken.
A troubled Airline
Putting aside the debates of experts, the very existence of Cameroon Airlines and the merry go rounds of problems in the West African sub region which culminated on the 23rd of October 2005 in the crash of Belleview Airways on take off from Lagos, Nigeria. The sad occurrence has thrown a thick veil in the capacity of fully run indigenous companies in the region to respond to security and safety two paramount requirements in the industry, at a time when passengers in the region are on the rise.
Cameroon Airlines is straddled with numerous financial difficulties, a thing that could make the lifting of the ban look premature and risky, for experiences has shown that, airlines that are faced with financial problems are always economical with everything including the most dangerous ones which are security and maintenance.
The company owes Chanas SA, a private insurance firm in Douala, Cameroon the sum of cfa francs 2.2 billion being the sum of unpaid arrears for insurance services rendered to staffs of the airline. The staff of Cameroon airlines are also having about 50 months of unpaid salaries apart from the fact that, one of the aircraft of the company, a Boeing 767-200 is being held in Abidjan, Ivory Coast thus reducing drastically the number of aircrafts owned and used by the firm(1).
Although Mr. Polycarpe Abah-Abah, Cameroon’s finance minister has disbursed part of the large sum that the government owed the company, it will not be enough to settle outstanding and pending debts that the airline owes it numerous creditors.
History /Solution
Cameroon Airlines Company was created on the 1st of November 1972 after Cameroon withdrew from the French-speaking pan African airliner, Air Afrique which was created in 1961(2). It began commercial activities with a fleet of five planes, but as a result of series of mismanagement of and merry go rounds new chief executives appointed by the authorities, the company has been crippled.
Even a person with no elementary knowledge in economy and management knows that, with the kind of trend led by the company and its executives it can’t survive. Cameroon Airlines is an airline company that is nothing, but a chaotic machine that is only miraculously working. It has a large work force which is a legacy of the many directors appointed at the helm of the company.
Hence the only remedies for the company to survive is first to down size the huge workforce and also install some seriousness in its daily management or possibly go the Nigerian way of full privatisation. Privatisation will be a good thing for the government because it will help it avoid throwing monies into a bottomless sink.
Furthermore, it will be good for the government to encourage private airlines from neighbouring countries and elsewhere to start using Cameroon’s three international airports because it will help crash down prices as seen currently in Nigeria on the Accra-Lagos or Lagos-London routes.
Notes: -1 read the article published by Aurore Plus a French language weekly found in the web site www.cameroon-info.net/cmi_show_news.php?id=15935
- 2 see www.cameroon-airlines.com the official web site of Cameroon Airlines.
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