November 7, 2006
Posted to the web November 7, 2006
Airport authorities in Africa have been accused of charging exorbitant taxes.
Participants at an African Airlines Association (Afraa) conference in Egypt said high taxes led to high airline fares and lower growth in the industry. However, representatives of various airport authorities said the high taxes reflected the costs of running airports.
Mr Bernard Mogambi of Kenya Airports Authority said increased security and infrastructure demands since the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US were to blame for higher costs.
Airports must share these costs with their stakeholders, he told the conference.
Meanwhile, Afraa is seeking a $15 million (Sh1 billion) grant to fund some members' the change from paper to electronic ticketing before a December 2007 deadline.
The move is expected to help cut airline spending as it costs $1 to process an e-ticket compared with $10 for paper.
Ten carriers in Africa have implemented e-ticketing, but two - Kenya Airways and South African Airways - issue more than 70 per cent of Africa's e-tickets. Globally, the industry has only achieved 67 per cent compliance while Africa has reached 59 per cent compliance.
African Airline Association (Afraa) yesterday said that CDE Pro-Invest, a European Union/African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) fund, was processing the grant for disbursement early next year.
Cost factors might cause delays in Africa's implementation of e-ticketing and auditing for safety standards, a representative of the association said. (We) applied for this grant to assist small and medium sized airlines that are in need of such funding.
Airlines that fail to beat the deadline risk losing their inter-line traffic . This is traffic shared between airlines for onward carrying and usually makes up 20-35 per cent of an airline's total traffic.
Of the 17,000 inter-line agreements on file with International Air Transport Association (IATA), only about 500 have been converted to electronic ticketing.
An additional 2,000 agreements will need to be converted before the end of 2007 to account for 80 per cent of inter-line traffic today, said Mr Thomas Windmuller, senior vice-president in charge of member and government relations at IATA. He added that failing to comply would be injurious to the continent's airlines.
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