PRESIDENT FAURE ANNOUNCES 30 MILLION DOLLAR SUBSIDY FOR AIR SEYCHELLES
(Posted 27th February 2019)
During the State of the Nation address by President Danny Rollen Faure yesterday did the Seychelles’ President announce that national airline Air Seychelles will be given a 6 million US Dollars subsidy for the next 5 years, eventually totalling to 30 million US Dollars.
This follows in the wake of erstwhile close partner Etihad having put distance between themselves and the archipelago’s national airline over the past two years, since the UAE national carrier’s financial position deteriorated rapidly following a series of failed investments like in airlines like Air Berlin, Jet Airways and Alitalia, among others.
Information has come to light that Air Seychelles, battered by partner Etihad’s decline in fortunes over the past years, may – after dropping all long haul services last year at the behest of Etihad – also go off the route to Abu Dhabi, from where a number of code share flights with Etihad have kept HM flight numbers traversing the globe.
Leaving the double daily flights between SEZ and AUH entirely to Etihad, would deal a near mortal blow to Air Seychelles’ ambition to remain a key player in the Indian Ocean region.
While announcing a few days ago that flights to Antananarivo / Madagascar will resume later this year, would axing the route to Abu Dhabi severely curtail the airline’s operations and almost bring back the short lived vision of one Bram Steller, formerly COO at Kenya Airways before joining Air Seychelles for a stint as CEO at the time when Etihad acquired a major stake and then installed their own Chief Executive.
Bram at the time had suggested to not only axe the entire B767 fleet of Air Seychelles and then, apart from a fleet of Twin Otter’s operating domestic scheduled and charter services, only use a single narrow body aircraft – he had proposed a B737-800NG – for inter island flights.
Etihad’s input in the early stages of the cooperation however turned the tide by gradually restoring long haul flights using Airbus A330 equipment, now sadly also a thing of the past, leaving Air Seychelles with a fleet of two A320’s and several Twin Otters.
