AFRICAN airlines are not immune to the serious financial and trading environment in the global air transport industry with passenger traffic down 8% in September and nett losses for African airlines predicted by Iata to total US$1bn in 2008 and 2009.
 
Speaking at the Aviation Outlook Africa Conference in Cape Town, Nigel Benson, director sales and leasing for BAE Systems Asset Management said “the global credit crunch is making finance for new aircraft deliveries harder to access and more expensive and African airlines have a challenge to find US$11bn over the next three years to finance some 238 new aircraft that represents the backlog that is on order”.
 
Benson said Africa had a total fleet of about 1 400 commercial aircraft in service with an average fleet age in excess of 20 years. The backlog represented 17% of the current operating fleet, compared with a global average of 36%. The older aircraft were typically concentrated in the turboprop fleet, which service regional routes.
 
He said the intra-African scheduled passenger network currently featured around 1 400 city pairs, with an average frequency of about 10 services per week at an average capacity of around 100 seats (compared with 12-plus in Europe and 16-plus in the USA).
 
Many routes in Africa would only deliver frequency growth through the further introduction of regional jets.
 
He said used aircraft were more economical over new aircraft by virtue of their lower capital cost, particularly in markets with lower than average utilisations such as in Africa. There were presently a significant number of such aircraft available in the market and African airlines were exploiting this availability to meet their current and future growth needs.
 
Benson said BAe’s 146/Avro RJ family of regional jetliners was growing in popularity in Africa with the number of aircraft acquired/delivered to African operators more than trebling from six to over 20 in the past year.
 
The latest operators to take delivery of the aircraft were Air Congo Limited of Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, Air Libya and Air Tourist of Gabon. By mid 2009, BAE Systems expected to see 65 aircraft in service in Africa with 20 different operators.