韩亚航空客机失事，非洲航空旅游承压

-At times it’s probably a bit more difficult than we thought it might have been, and African airs is a bit like Europe was in the 70s or 80s, everything is controlled nationally by bilateral agreements between countries, a lot of protectionism, a lot of restrictions.

-So how are you going to beat them where they have defeated others before you?

-Here in Africa, we’re dealing with each individual country,what we can’t do is create a pan-African airline which is all one company. That just won’t work un-liberalized arena such as this. So what we were doing is constructing individual companies, but for the consumer, it will be one product. It’s a bit like a franchise.

-It’s exactly a franchise.

-If you think about it, it’s exactly a franchise. You’re selling them the flag andthe name.

-Most hotel chains don’t actually have many hotels at all.You know, if you are going to a particular brand of hotel around the world, you know what standard you’re gonna get. Now we can do the same with aviation.

-That still doesn’t address the problem of how thoseindividual companies are going to solve the issues which have bedeviled Africanaviation.

-We’ve shown two things, I’d say in a very small way inTanzania. One is that we cannot break within that infrastructure, but also thelocal smuggle works. 38% of our passengers so far in Tanzania have been firsttime flyers.

It’s not clear whether Fastjet can ever become the carrier itaims to be, having posted a $56 million loss for the 18 months to the end oflast year, the auditors KPMG said they had, in their words, significant doubtsthat the airline would be able to continue trading. Fastjet have brushed asidethe concerns, but are aware of the risks. For now, the airline carries on.

-You must have the temperament of a saint to be able to keepyour cool during this process, because it must be absolutely, mind-bogglinglyfrustrating.

-In the first few weeks, I found quite a lot of people in theoffice, things would happen, and they would say, oh, it’s Africa. I bent thatphrase, I said I know it’s Africa, that’s where we are working, we know whatthe problems are, let’s just deal with them.