Far be it from me to stand in the way of an argument as to who is racist and who is not. However, a few facts are always helpful in our understanding of the situation. The prime reason there has been no Airbus A320 series crashes in Africa is that there are virtually no aircraft of that type operating there. The only company I know of who operate the Airbus in non-Middle Eastern Africa are First Nation Airlines, who are a Nigerian start-up crewed almost entirely by European pilots.
Like many interested observers, I cannot help but wonder how Stelios and his mate Ed are going to change the face of African aviation safety. I genuinely wish him well in his endeavour, but he faces some very significant practical problems. In order to start an airline he needs Training Captains who are very experienced on the Airbus. The vast majority of those are currently employed in other airlines around the world. They would need significant inducements to leave a basically safe environment, in a financial and professional sense, to join a start-up airline in Africa. Unless he is willing to pay absolutely top dollar, I cannot imagine how anyone is going to leave easyJet, Thomas Cook, Monarch, Emirates, Etihad, British Airways etc in order to work in Africa. By definition, he will have to recruit from some of the 'second tier' airlines in safety terms and still pay top dollar. And we still have not begun to resolve the problem of recruiting pilots with Airbus experience willing to live in that part of the world. First Nation Airways, whom I alluded to earlier, are a case in point. They have enormous difficulty hanging onto their pilots, because Europeans simply do not want to live in Lagos, if they have any other credible choice. Then there is the issue of local licenses, which I know is a problem within Africa. In a nutshell, FastJet has a mountain to climb in an operational sense, and that is only the start of their problems. If Stelios is successful in this endeavour, I will only stand back and applaud a remarkable achievement. The reality is however, that the dice are loaded massively against success in this case. I do not expect many currently-employed pilots to leave jobs to go and work for FastJet. Time may prove me wrong, however, so we will just have to wait and see.