Despite a rally in October last year, with volumes picking up and showing a lot of promise, it wasn’t sustained and the year ahead could well be another lean one for the airline industry. That’s the view of The Cargo Connection managing director Gerd von Mansberg who believes that as long as the rand remains strong and many carriers fly for ego and not profit it will take the economy a long time to grow into the capacity. The challenges in Africa are many, he added. “There’s too much capacity on many African routes now,” says Von Mansberg “I don’t understand why regional airlines do not do interlines and take some frequencies out. “On a particular route we have the national carrier operating twice daily in addition to two other SA carriers. None of them have a passenger load factor of more that 50% which makes little sense.” According to Von Mansberg, the rates to many countries in the SADC are now lower than a domestic flight to Cape Town. And while there have been some bursts of activity, they’re generally sporadic, he added.
