For an accessible and affordable air transport

Air travel has an immense impact on society. It creates jobs, boosts tourism and indeed serves as an important lever for economic growth. It provides support for the movement of goods and persons across various borders while at the same time acting as an enabler for tourism, social inclusion and cultural exchanges. 

As Africa seeks to improve connectivity across the continent, it needs to increase the number of persons that are willing and able to fly, increase the size of the fleet of the various airlines in their respective states, and also improve on the ease of accessibility to and within airport terminals.

Recently, a group of professionals were in their African country for the annual conference of their professional body. They had come from the United Kingdom and had lodged in a good hotel in the city centre. At the end of the conference, the driver they had booked for the trip to the airport for two in the morning failed to show up. Their flight was for five that morning. They thankfully had to resort to a ride hailing App to get to the airport several kilometres from the city centre.

On another occasion in another African city, on a Sunday, no driver was available on the ride hailing App for a traveller that had a six thirty flight in the morning. It was an anxious moment as the traveller frantically sought for any available vehicle including the motor bikes for the trip to the airport. An added constraint was that vehicles painted in taxi colours were not allowed in that airport. So the choices available to the traveller were limited.

Making airports more accessible will require leveraging on the thinking that airports can be multimodal hubs.  This type of thinking will not only increase connectivity to airports that may be cited far away from where the population is, it will also increase non-aeronautical revenues. When more people have access to an airport, the increased footfalls provide opportunities for such other retail as well as food and beverages sales, amongst others. 

Where accessibility is difficult, the travel anxiety may be such that the only thing in the mind of the traveller is to get to the airport and into the plane as quickly as possible. This way the traveller will not be open to retail opportunities and may have spent so much trying to get to the airport that there is no provision any more for purchases at the airport. 

Individuals with disabilities will also have to be provided for in the drive towards accessible air travel. It will entail having wheelchair friendly terminals, accessories that passengers with some form of disability can put on as a signal to the airport that they may need assistance, as well as soft skills of empathy and sympathy that employees will need to inculcate while also getting the training needed to deal with persons with disability at the airport. 

McKinsey, the global strategy firm, states that despite the significant upside, its associated cost, and its general importance in the customer journey, the area of payments as a strategic topic has often been unaddressed by the aviation industry. It further states that generally, there is little transparency or engagement with the topic, and many airlines do not strategically monitor payment and transaction data, and there is an absence of defined roles or KPIs in the area. Furthermore, says the global strategy firm, many airlines have yet to leverage the link between payments and customer experience; these are often viewed as separate concerns. But payments are an important element of the customer journey — each touch point presents an opportunity to capture additional revenue, it says. 

Making travel more affordable, will require leveraging on the expert opinion that there are a lot of people who prefer to pay with alternative forms of payment. Some alternatives like Buy Now Pay Later and similar types of financial instruments are essential in the ability of airlines to meet customer needs. In difficult macroeconomic terrains, some of these alternatives could go a long way in improving revenue and load factors as more people are able to fly.

The aviation sector in Africa is expected to experience tremendous growth, with some regions growing faster than others. Airbus was reported to have predicted Africa will require about 1,180 new aircraft by 2042, including 885 single-aisle and 295 widebody jets. Furthermore, it expects African carriers to transition to new-generation models, such as the A220, A320neo family, A330neo, and A350.  Doing so will lead to operational efficiency and reduce carbon emissions, in line with airlines’ sustainability goals, and will as well improve upon the passenger experience at airports. 

Making airports accessible and affordable is a strategic approach to growing the aviation market in Africa and as such should be given the importance it deserves. 

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