ROUTES AFRICA COMBINES WITH MIDDLE EAST FOR MEETING IN BAHRAIN
(Posted 30th May 2015)
The hitherto individual Routes Africa and Routes Middle East events have been bundled this year for a combined Routes Middle East & Africa meeting. The aviation conference due to kick off tomorrow in the capital of the Kingdom of Bahrain, Manama. Bahrain International Airport tomorrow, 31st of May and will last until the 02nd of June inclusive.
According to a media release received is the Routes organization expecting some 350 delegates from around 50 airlines, up to 70 airports and around 10 tourism authorities, seeking to use the meeting to network and strike business contacts.
There has been some mixed reactions from African airline executives over this being the second such meeting in the space of two months, where Africa and the Middle East are coming face to face in an aviation meeting and there were both pro and con comments received.
Impossible to give each and every one a platform, and respective the wishes of those who spoke or mailed off the record, in summary the following pro points were raised:
· Opportunity to engage with Gulf carriers
· Opportunity for Gulf carriers to understand the growing sentiments by African airlines vis a vis their shrinking share of traffic share
· Opportunity for African airlines to advocate equitability in bilateral air services agreements
On the downside were the following con points raised:
· Strategy sessions may be blunted by use of diplo lingo as African airlines might speak less candidly about the growing competitive threat by Gulf carriers, and their planned countermeasures, than when among themselves
· Aversion to coming face to face with ‘the enemy from the Gulf’ which airlines are ransacking traffic share for African airlines
· Unwillingness to show for which side African airlines are rooting in the current US/European squabbles with Gulf states over airline subsidies.
· They don’t even do us the courtesy of observing the alphabetical order where Africa should come first. It is clear where this is heading and where priorities lie.
Those were but a few key points raised and it will no doubt be interesting to see how the discussions go and if, as one hopes, the newly devised platform will be able to open doors, help African and Gulf Airlines understand each other better – which bluntly put means mainly Gulf airlines to understand the growing anti-sentiments from African carriers – and using the opportunity to defuse a potential Africa versus the Gulf development as presently seen between the European and US legacy carriers and the Gulf new kids on the block.
Said on airline executive spoken to recently: ‘For us it is a chance to look the enemy in the eye. It is a chance to try and figure out their next moves when it comes to their Africa route planning. Together with Turkish are Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways, and increasingly FlyDubai and Air Arabia, the main six airlines we identified as carving deeply into our traffic share. This cannot go on indefinitely. Aviation was built on reciprocity between countries, equitability even. There is nothing equitable and nothing much reciprocal left when we check the African aviation situation. AFRAA has time and again appealed to African governments to be more considerate of their own airlines’ when signing BASA’s. We often have a feeling that our bureaucrats are literally throwing traffic rights at the Gulf big boys and when African airlines want traffic rights they slam the door in their faces. This is not right and perhaps should be made a central issue in Bahrain’.
Watch this space for updates from Bahrain as and when Routes is sharing information or else follow the event via the event on Twitter via hashtag #RoutesMEA
