Thu, Jun 21, 2001 page19

• Air Afrique now a reminder of despair

  While the African airline has survived crises before, it is currently bankrupt, its debt is bigger than ever, it has a mere six planes left and articles about the firm are using words like `requiem' and `abyss'

  • By Norimitsu Onishi / NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  Only months after France's African colonies gained their independence in 1960, they sounded a clarion call to African sovereignty and unity: they would pool their meager resources and create an airline of their own.

  Colonialism had left behind air routes, roads and navigable rivers used not to ferry people from one corner of Africa to another but mainly to convey natural resources from the continent's interior to its coastal ports -- and then to Paris or London or Brussels. So just as a phone call from one ex-African colony to another might have to go through a switchboard in Paris, travel in Africa was always circuitous. An African airline would change all that.

  And so on June 26, 1961, Air Afrique was born -- an experiment that would mirror the continent's ups and downs over the next four decades, from post-independence euphoria to post-Cold War torpor.

  

  Three decades after Air Afrique's glory days when there was talk of adding a Concorde to its fleet, it has a mere six planes left. Its fleet is down from 15 in 1998, and creditors are threatening to seize the rest. An Air Afrique plane at the airport in Abidjan.

  PHOTO: NY TIMES

  "To me, Air Afrique was the biggest and best company when I was a boy," said Marcel Gabou, an Ivoirian who has been a commercial pilot for 14 years and at Air Afrique since 1997. "I would go to the airport just to watch the planes take off or taxi. It impressed me and I decided I'd work for this company. It was the dream company for every young African who wanted to become a pilot."

  "But now," he added, "the image of Air Afrique has been tarnished."

  Today, three decades after Air Afrique's glory days when there was talk of adding a Concorde to its fleet, it has a mere six planes left. Its fleet is down from 15 in 1998, and creditors are threatening to seize the rest. While Air Afrique has survived crises before, it is now bankrupt, its debt is bigger than ever, and publications on the continent are using words like "requiem" and "abyss." With great difficulty, it continues to fly inside Africa, as well as to Paris and New York.

  Air Afrique's fate now lies, in great part, with the World Bank. An American has been appointed Air Afrique's interim chief executive, and American consultants are leading efforts to restructure the company. The present state of the airline, once a shining symbol of Africa's imminent take-off, is seen by many West Africans with darker meanings: continued dependence on the West, France's abandonment of its former colonies, and the ascendancy of a US-led World Bank.

  "Everything that's happening at Air Afrique is a well-planned death by the West," said Karim Nana, a Burkinabe who has been a mechanic at the airline since 1975.

  Many have leveled their anger at the World Bank, which provided US$800,000 toward Air Afrique's restructuring, endorsed the choice of its American chief executive, and agreed to pay for lay-offs to reduce the current work force of 4,200. In April, the bank outlined two options to Air Afrique's member countries: liquidate Air Afrique without creating a new company, or restructure or liquidate Air Afrique to create a new regional company.

  Enraged workers then protested in front of the bank's office here in Abidjan, which is also the headquarters for the airline.

  In many ways, Air Afrique's symbolism has always been more potent than its reality. As pan-Africanism swept newly freed Africa four decades ago, 11 former French colonies in West and Central Africa -- Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mauritania, Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, the Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Gabon and Cameroon -- created Air Afrique, choosing an antelope as its emblem.

  At first, fleet and passengers increased steadily. But just as pan-Africanism faded in the 1970s, two of Air Afrique's richer members, Cameroon and Gabon, both oil producers, left and founded their own airlines. (Togo and Mali joined after the airline's founding, leaving the number of member countries at 11.)

  Even more significantly, as time passed, the reality behind Africa's symbol of unity became impossible to deny: France, which retained much closer ties to Africa than other colonial powers, essentially ran Air Afrique. The pilots, mechanics, ground and flight crews were mostly French expatriates; the French filled, of course, all supervisory positions.

  By the early 1980s, the Africanization of Air Afrique was complete, with Africans occupying all top administrative posts. That is when Air Afrique, by all accounts, began to decline.

  "Everything had been going well," recalled Nana, the mechanic who lived through the transition, "but the moment we began to Africanize on a large scale, we lacked the means to train properly the people who took over."

  Air Afrique's descent was precipitous. Nepotism, corruption, the contraband of tickets, the seats handed out to governments that never paid, the business-class seats that were reserved for ministers' girlfriends -- all these problems, not too different from those that would afflict the continent, were obvious to all.

  "The company became the property of people who were no longer motivated, who became dealers for themselves," said Bah Amadou, 73, a Guinean who worked as a technician and is now retired. "There was no control. All you had to do was show your Air Afrique name tag to get tonnes of free cargo. And since the employees and bosses took all the space, customers were hurt. We would refuse them extra kilograms if they asked."

  The 11 countries turned to France for help, and in 1989 a high-ranking French government official took over Air Afrique. But its problems proved too great, especially after the devaluation of the local franc doubled its debt in the mid-1990s.

  Air Afrique became better known as "Air Maybe." Planes never came, arrived half a day late, or surprised passengers by arriving -- and leaving -- several hours early. Planes were so often overbooked that passengers with no friends behind the check-in counter or no money to fork over a bribe were stranded for several days waiting for the next flight.

  Jeune Afrique, a Paris-based magazine that covers French-speaking Africa, pointed out last year that service had deteriorated so much that even Air Afrique's chief executive at the time, a Senegalese named Pape Sow Thiam, never flew in his own planes to Paris. He always flew Air France.

  France itself -- its aid agency holds a 9 percent stake in Air Afrique and Air France a 12 percent share -- seemed to have lost interest in rescuing the African carrier this time. Africans saw this as further evidence that France was loosening its ties with Africa. For the France of a generation ago, they reasoned, would never have allowed the 11 countries to turn for help to the World Bank, which is regarded in much of Africa as an instrument of the US.

  After a meeting in November, with US$800,000 from the bank and its endorsement, the 11 countries hired Jeffrey Erickson, a former chief executive of TWA who had also participated in the restructuring of Continental Airlines.

  "When I came here at the end of January, the company was out of cash and the debt had increased substantially in the 60 days since the November meeting" Erickson, who was born in Yonkers and lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, said in an interview in his office in downtown Abidjan. "It was US$40 million worse." Asked how the debt, which now totals about US$240 million, had increased by so much in so little time, he said: "I don't know."

  Attributing the carrier's problems to the fact that it was managed for 40 years as "a political entity," Erickson said that airlines employ on average between 100 and 200 workers for each aircraft. Air Afrique's work force of 4,200 must be slashed by half, to reflect its fleet of six planes, he said, adding that he wanted to acquire four more planes soon.

  Erickson, who had never visited Africa before and speaks no French, was accused of arrogance. He said he tried to remain focused on his mission.

  "I don't know African politics -- don't know a lot about it," he said. "I've been here for five months. I appreciate it. But my mission is as an airline professional of 34 years, and that's the expertise I bring to the table."

  His salary for the first three months was paid by the World Bank, but he is now on Air Afrique's payroll. Erickson said the carrier's on-time performance had improved in recent months, but the big decisions about the carrier's future have yet to be made by the 11 owners.

  On June 13, officials from the countries, including four presidents, gathered in Abidjan to weigh the options. Air Afrique workers marched in front of the hotel where the officials met. One worker held a poster of Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Ivory Coast's founding president and a big champion of Air Afrique and African solidarity, with the words: "Continue our work."

  At the end of the day, however, the officials announced that they would focus their energies on a single course: Getting help from France. No mention was made of the World Bank's two options. The next day, the independent newspaper, Le Jour, described their announcement as a "considerable step backward."

  So far, France has given no answer to the plea for help.
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