Cost, quality and skills are three of the key factors ensuring the effective use of data for business success. Presenting a Routes Talk entitled 'The Lack of Data in Africa' at Routes Africa in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Sabre senior management consultant Gad Wavomba said while good data does cost money, the return on investment makes it worthwhile.
Since Zimbabwe hosted delegates at Routes Africa in June 2014, what was then a building site at Victoria Falls International Airport has now turned into a brand new modern facility ready to host global visitors.
Yesterday’s Routes Africa Strategy Summit highlighted some of the most interesting aspects of aviation in Africa today. More than a dozen high-profile speakers debated some of the key topics impacting the aviation business across the region.
Binter made its debut in Cape Verde in 2012 and its planned expansion will mark its first intra-African operation. The growth is being facilitated by the arrival of new regional turboprop equipment in its Canary Islands based fleet freeing up older aircraft to be redeployed into Cape Verde.
At present, Bilbao Airport serves more than four million people a year. The airport directly provides services within Europe, but after hosting Routes Europe in 2018, long-haul services could be on the horizon for the Basque Country.
The airport, famous for its sleek terminal building designed by Spanish neofuturistic architect, structural engineer, sculptor and painter, Santiago Calatrava Valls, reported a second successive year of year-on-year traffic growth in 2015 and fifth rise in the past six years.
The launch of a new national carrier for Uganda has been on the table for the last few years and was first reported by Routesonline back in July 2013 after a senior Ugandan Government Minister revealed at that year’s Routes Africa forum in Kampala that discussions have once again taken place over the resurrection of Uganda Airlines as an at least partially state-controlled national carrier to boost trade and tourism into the East African country.
Nile Air will become the first private Egyptian carrier to introduce domestic services within the country when it launches the new three times weekly Cairo – Hurghada and four times weekly Cairo – Sharm el Sheikh starting from July 1, 2016 and June 30, 2016, respectively but it is still expanding its international reach, especially into Saudi Arabia, which remains its main focus market.
In a presentation during the Routes Africa Strategy Summit in Tenerife, Canary Islands on the subject of how African carriers can capitalise on travel growth, Gad Wavomba, senior consultant, Sabre Airline Solutions warned that many airlines are failing to benchmark against industry standards and as a result are failing to fulfil their potential.
An open skies arrangement is unlikely to be introduced in Africa until governments on the continent see their airlines as businesses, not personal play things. Speaking at the Routes Africa Strategy Summit in Tenerife, Raphael Kuuchi, the vice president of Africa at the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said the failure of countries to accept the need for liberalisation was endemic across the continent.
African airlines are too small to survive alone and need to work together more if they are to continue doing business in an increasingly global world. In fact it was suggested that unless a small airline could evolve, grow, and develop partnerships with others, it would simply fail.
The Siberian Aeronautical Research Institute, named after S. A. Chaplygin (SibNIA), believes its TVS-2MS turboprop conversion of the classic Antonov An-2 piston airliner could prolong the life of the venerable aircraft into a ninth decade, with Africa a strong potential market for the modernised aeroplane.
The second panel session of the Routes Africa Strategy Summit saw esteemed professionals from the aviation industry discuss the impact of tourism within Africa. The panel was moderated by Edward Robertson, editor of Routes News, and featured Richard Bodin, chief commercial officer of fastjet; Fernando Estrada, chief strategy officer of Vueling; Stephanie Wear, director of economic and air service development Tenerife Tourism Corporation and Yolanta Strikista, director of Strikista Consulting.
In a comprehensive look at the potential impact of Brexit on UK air transport by International Air Transport Association (IATA), the industry body predicted that preliminary estimates suggest that the number of UK air passengers could be 3-5 percent lower by 2020, driven by the expected downturn in economic activity and the fall in the sterling exchange rate. The near-term impact on the UK air freight market is less certain, according to IATA but freight will be affected by lower international trade in the longer term.
Emirates has announced that its service between Dubai and Dakar, currently operated by an Airbus A340-300, will be replaced with a Boeing 777-300ER from September 2, 2016.
Malaysian low-cost carrier (LCC) AirAsia is backing a campaign to rename the second terminal at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) from KLIA2 to Low Cost Carrier Terminal 2 (LCCT2 or LCC2), to emphasize its role as AirAsia’s main hub.
