My jaw dropped to the floor last week when I heard that
government was considering reviving the defunct Uganda Airlines. The argument
was that since travellers to Entebbe have increased eightfold since the
national carrier was wound up the enterprise has become more viable.
They say that the one thing we learn from history is that we
don’t learn from history.
Why did Uganda Airlines go down in the first place?
It’s a long story but in a nutshell after the collapse of
the East African Airways in 1976 each of the three east African countries went
it alone creating their own national carriers. Kenya had headstart as it
retained most of the planes, Uganda was
in the throes of the Idi Amin’s regime and never caught any traction, limping
on with less than a handful of routes. A selloff its lucrative ground handling
services at Entebbe Airport and a bungled privatization process finally forced
government to put it out of its misery at the beginning of the last decade.
Since then several government back private airlines have been
launched only to collapse spectacularly when the reality of the industry hit
them. Air Uganda backed by the Aga Khan is doing much better and is probably
our best chance – in the long term, of being our de facto national carrier.
British billionaire Richard Branson once said “If you want
to be a millionaire start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline.”
Given the reality on the ground it’s hard to justify the
billions of dollars the government would have to pour into an airline to make
it viable.
An airlines biggest assets are the routes it flies, the more
lucrative the better.
Entebbe airport last year did about 1.5 million passengers
that is less than half the amount of traffic that was done on the London-New
York route. Entebbe’s passengers are serviced by 20 airlines.
For Uganda Airlines to be viable it would have to compete
with British Airways on the London route, Emirates on the Dubai route, Kenya
Airways and Air Uganda on the Nairobi route and the list goes on and on.
Assuming we took the hair brained decision to resuscitate
the carrier the government would be pouring billions of dollars not shillings
into a black hole for at least 10 years before we can even break even.
While we are on hair brained ideas a short cut would be to
restrict these other airlines from flying into Entebbe so we can support our
startup company. Ink is at a premium so we shall not dwell on that ridiculous
notion, except to say it will cause irreparable damage to Uganda as an air
destination or transit point for travellers.
Why would we want to revive the airline anyway? Some people
have this notion that we need a national carrier to direct traffic to our
shores, as a marketing tool for the country to the world and that it would
serve as symbol of national pride.
All very true but totally taken out of context for Uganda.
To begin with a national carrier is not a perquisite for
anything. The US does not have a national airline – state-owned or otherwise,
and does not need one to direct traffic to its shores. And as we learnt with
the old Uganda Airlines there was a time with their inability to keep time,
cancelled flights and plane crashes it did more harm for our image abroad and
the same goes with promoting or decimating national pride.
If government is feeling the money is burning its pockets, it
would get a better return for its money by upgrading and expanding Entebbe
airport to better manage the increased traffic anticipate with the discovery of
oil and growing tourist numbers. As it is now when Emirates lands its Airbus
380, passengers are inconvenienced with delays, what will happen when we have
five Boeings landing within half an hour of each other? It will be a disaster.
But why are we even entertaining the idea of government
going back into business?
Only this week we learnt that we are losing almost sh400b in
treatment for sanitation related decisions partly because we do not have a
enough toilets – pit latrines not flush toilets, in the country.
