AFRAA: CEOs call for management stability and cooperation to fight off foreign challenge

The instability in the management of African airlines and a regular changing of government ministers is holding back African success. Inati Ntshanga, SA Express chief executive said at the AFRAA general assembly near Mombasa today, that the association's board of 12 airline CEOs had seen a 50% change of membership over the past year.

“Only Dr Titus at Kenya Airways has achieved 12 years in the role of CEO” Ntshanga said. “That service and consistency in the management and in the strategy has seen Kenya Airlines grow dramatically.
“If there are constant changes at the airline and also government people change and have different agendas – even if they are in the same party - so nobody really gets it.
“Perhaps keeping a management team together longer could make African airlines stronger and able to compete better.”
Ntshanga was part of a panel of chief executives debating how the African airlines could take on the foreign carriers that now accounts for almost 80% of intercontinental air travel.
The new chief at South African Airways, Monwatbisi Kalawe, agreed but warned the industry needed to start thinking ahead.
“One thing I have noticed is the way we look back all the time,” Kalawe said. “ it is like we are trying to drive forwards but our view is by looking through the rear view mirror. We need to stop looking back and look to the future,” he said.
Kalawe was also critical of the restrictions on travel for Africans between African countries. “If the constraints are removed, making travel arrangements become easier, then it would change. The potential is there.”
The CEOs were unanimous in a call to action.
Abderahman Berthe, is CEO of West Africa’s Air Burkina. He said there should be greater cooperation between African airlines and African governments and that the Yamoussoukro Decision (YD) should be ratified urgently.
Ntshanga and Naikuni also agreed that lobbying governments and the African Union was essential if change is to happen.
Questions from the floor also suggested that mergers between some of the region’s strongest airlines supported by a feeder network of other national airlines could be the answer.
Naikuni said that although some of the alliance rules prohibited talks with airlines in other alliances, that it would make sense for the big four airlines – Ethiopian, EgyptAir, Kenya Airways and South African – to develop a joint strategy.
“I will undertake to make sure that meeting happens in the next 12 months,” he said.