NaijaNinja
22nd Sep 2007, 22:25
Hello People,
Am not sure if this story is already in an existing thread but just wanted to share it with you all. Enjoy!
West Africa group plans African regional airline
A West African group plans to launch an airline to help fill in route gaps left by problems at regional state-owned airlines, before expanding to the rest of the continent, an official said on Wednesday. The Togolese-based SPCAR — Regional Airline Promotion Company — hopes to unveil the new airline at the end of October, with operations targeted to begin in the first quarter of 2008, its chairman Gervais Djondo told reporters in Johannesburg.
The company has embarked on roadshow to attract investment for the $200 million project, which Djondo said was meant to plug a gap in Africa’s air travel market, currently largely serviced by European airlines. “After the collapse of different airlines in West Africa ... there was this gap that was created by the collapse of these companies and something needed to be done to fill this gap,” he said, adding travellers sometimes needed to go through Europe to get to other African countries.
“Some of the European airlines make about 75 to 80 percent or even 90 percent of their profit from Africa,” he said, speaking through an interpreter. Officials say problems at Nigeria Airways, Ghana Airways, Air Afrique and Cameroon Airlines amid a series of air crashes in the region, had left a gap in the West African market.
SPCAR is owned by Ecobank, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) and the West African Development Bank. But Djondo said the airline would remain privately-owned. “After careful analysis of what led to the collapse of these airlines... we came to the conclusion that there is a need to set up a regional airline that is not state controlled because most of them were owned by national governments,” he said.
The new airline, the name of which would be announced at its launch, would initially ply routes in West Africa before moving to the rest of the continent, and further afield. It would initially offer mainly passenger services but would also later look at the lucrative freight market. In the first year of operation the airline would lease aircraft not more than five-years-old, to counter the continent’s poor air safety record. Africa accounted for nearly a fifth of fatal airliner accidents last year, despite having only 3 percent of global flight departures, according to the Dutch-based Aviation Safety Network.
http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/business/september07/21092007/b121092007.html
Am not sure if this story is already in an existing thread but just wanted to share it with you all. Enjoy!
West Africa group plans African regional airline
A West African group plans to launch an airline to help fill in route gaps left by problems at regional state-owned airlines, before expanding to the rest of the continent, an official said on Wednesday. The Togolese-based SPCAR — Regional Airline Promotion Company — hopes to unveil the new airline at the end of October, with operations targeted to begin in the first quarter of 2008, its chairman Gervais Djondo told reporters in Johannesburg.
The company has embarked on roadshow to attract investment for the $200 million project, which Djondo said was meant to plug a gap in Africa’s air travel market, currently largely serviced by European airlines. “After the collapse of different airlines in West Africa ... there was this gap that was created by the collapse of these companies and something needed to be done to fill this gap,” he said, adding travellers sometimes needed to go through Europe to get to other African countries.
“Some of the European airlines make about 75 to 80 percent or even 90 percent of their profit from Africa,” he said, speaking through an interpreter. Officials say problems at Nigeria Airways, Ghana Airways, Air Afrique and Cameroon Airlines amid a series of air crashes in the region, had left a gap in the West African market.
SPCAR is owned by Ecobank, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) and the West African Development Bank. But Djondo said the airline would remain privately-owned. “After careful analysis of what led to the collapse of these airlines... we came to the conclusion that there is a need to set up a regional airline that is not state controlled because most of them were owned by national governments,” he said.
The new airline, the name of which would be announced at its launch, would initially ply routes in West Africa before moving to the rest of the continent, and further afield. It would initially offer mainly passenger services but would also later look at the lucrative freight market. In the first year of operation the airline would lease aircraft not more than five-years-old, to counter the continent’s poor air safety record. Africa accounted for nearly a fifth of fatal airliner accidents last year, despite having only 3 percent of global flight departures, according to the Dutch-based Aviation Safety Network.
http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/business/september07/21092007/b121092007.html