Interesting times in African aviation

Once again this low-cost airline in Africa has been overlooked by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to receive an air service license (ASL). Is this intentional, and if so, what is the reasoning behind it?

The pending application by Fastjet to set up a low-cost airline in Kenya has again not been dealt with. This leaves the fate of the application mired in clouds of suspicion and allegations as the authority at a hearing last year deferred a decision on this applications. It followed objections from a number of airlines either already flying, or others which for all intents and purpose are defunct but have kept their air service licenses current.

It is now all but clear that the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) has been turned into a Berlin Wall by local airlines which are intent to keep competition out of the Kenyan skies, competition which would bring the cost of air transport down considerably, going by the low-end fares Fastjet charges on its Tanzanian domestic routes (plus taxes and regulatory fees).

This lack of a conclusive decision for Fastjet’s Kenyan ASL, however, is not directly linked to the airline’s Tanzanian company’s application for landing rights for flights from Dar es Salaam to Nairobi. This too has been kept in the bottom drawers of the KCAA bureaucrazies, pun fully intended, for now almost a year. The lack of approval for what the Tanzanian CAA has clearly stated is a duly-registered Tanzanian airline, designated for the route, and meeting all criteria as far as ownership is concerned, but has been led to a short-lived and sharpish tit for tat by the TCAA when it curtailed flights by Kenyan airlines into Tanzania by nearly 60 percent, before a Head of State intervention agreed to restore air services – and in a related development – also access by Tanzanian tour vehicles to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

This, however, is subject to a negotiated settlement of this and other contentious issues between the two EAC (East African Community) countries which has bedeviled bilateral relations and impacted on the tourism and aviation sectors of both countries. TCAA sources, still smarting from the arrogant treatment dished out to them at the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) meeting last year in Bali, when they met their Kenyan counterparts, have all but confirmed that should Kenya continue to withhold landing rights for Fastjet Tanzania, they would revert to flight bans and even carry out regular ramp checks on Kenyan-registered aircraft landing in Tanzania as punitive measures. Such would then continue until as one source said verbatim but on condition of anonymity: ‘… our airline gets permission to fly to Nairobi no matter of the consequences. Aviation is based on reciprocity which we have not received. It is also based on us confirming ownership status and the continued questioning of our decision by the Kenyan CAA amounts to declaring us unfit to do our job. This is nothing but leveling the playing field which until now was very uneven.”

In a related development, it was also learned that defunct Jetlink, which folded some years ago over the refusal by the South Sudanese Central Bank to let them repatriate over US$2.5 million worth of ticket sales, was granted a one-year renewal of their air service license. Jetlink had severally tried to get into the air again but has hit multiple obstacles until now and got a year left under the license renewals to make it or break it. Only one application for a variation of a license was refused while all other 22 applicants received a thumbs up. Notably, Jubba Airlines with its parent company based in Djibouti, granted a license to fly to and from Nairobi to Entebbe, among other destinations. This has led to prompt questions from Uganda aviation circles regarding how Kenya could “stuff” the skies between their two countries with airlines bearing a 5Y registration while mistreating companies like RwandAir which is flying under Ugandan fifth freedom rights between Entebbe and Nairobi and was slapped with a capacity cap when flights commence at the end of January this year.

There are certainly interesting days ahead as the bilateral meeting is coming closer.