AIR MADAGASCAR STAFF HIT OUT AT AIR FRANCE IN MISPLACED ATTEMPT TO GAIN PASSENGER NUMBERS
(Posted 08th April 2016)
The choice of flying with Air Madagascar does no longer seem that natural, now that militants within the airlines’ ranks have boycotted the handling of Air France flights when landing at Antananarivo, compelling the French national airline to divert flights to Reunion’s Roland Garros International Airport. From there have passengers been transported on to the Madagascar capital by chartered flight.
Air Madagascar, struggling for a long period of time, has been on the EU Blacklist for many years now over both safety and oversight concerns by the European Union’s aviation body EASA, and while, when using a leased Airbus A340 with French registration, flying to Paris every other day, does Air France offer daily departures.
Hotheads among the Air Madagascar staff, besides boycotting the handling of Air France flights, have also demanded that the bilateral air services agreement be changed to guarantee their airline a fifty percent traffic share, something experts say is entirely unrealistic.
‘The decision to fly with one airline as opposed to another is based very often on client perception. If clients perceive an airline as unsafe – after all is Air Madagascar on the EU Blacklist – or as unreliable, then they move their bookings to other airlines. If they think that the ground and inflight service is less good on one airline as opposed to another, they take similar decisions. Price is not always a deciding factor when choosing one airline over the other‘ commented a Nairobi based source with some insight into the affairs of the island carrier.
Air France reportedly uplifts 80 percent of the traffic between France and Madagascar, and as a result of the home airline’s woes has Kenya Airways doubled their flights from Antananarivo to Nairobi to tap into market demand.
The Madagascar government reacted sharply and arrested some of the ringleaders, stating in public that it is the issue of safety with had put Air Madagascar on the EU list, not the government’s failure to protect Air Madagascar.
In 2009, when the political troubles of the island spilled over into the streets of the capital, arrivals of tourists took a nosedive from the previous year from 375.000 arrivals to less than half that number, i.e. 163.000 only.
While more recently numbers showed an upwards trend again with more than 250.000 visitors is this at almost the same level like Seychelles and only a quarter of the arrivals of Mauritius, a sign of a deeply troubled tourism industry which should do much better but, due to such woes, political, aviation related, health related, security related and for poor reputation and perception, has yet to find a new footing.
In an effort to cut cost has the airline halted their flights to China and attempts by the government to find a strategic investor have so far failed to yield any tangible results.
