By Allan Olingo

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The Kenya Civil Aviation Authority director general Gilbert Kibe spoke to The EastAfrican on the Open Skies initiative and why the region stands a better chance of progress.

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What is the latest on the Single African Air Transport Market programme?

It is operational and states like Togo are already operationalising it, through agreements with other countries in West Africa, where cross-border flights are now treated as domestic flights.

East Africa is yet to operationalise it because some member states have not yet signed the agreement — with only Kenya and Rwanda having done so.

We aim to domesticate African prices so that we can lower costs of operations, which will then translate into lower ticket prices.

How will the Open Skies programme work for East Africa?

The EAC will have to discuss a multilateral air service agreement. This means we will have a regional airspace operated by airlines of the member states as domestic flights. This will see a reduction in taxes, with the airport passenger service charge being the first to come down to about 10 per cent of ticket value.

Other shared costs by airlines will also be reduced, translating into a reduction in the air ticket costs. I would like to see a return air ticket of $100 from Nairobi to Entebbe or Juba or Bujumbura.

What is standing in the way of an EAC single domestic market?

The Single African Air Transport Market has to work smoothly through the regional blocs — the EAC, the Southern African Development Community and the Economic Community of West African States. There has been progress, but not as quickly as we would like to see, mostly because we are not all signatories to the open skies initiative.

There are still terms and conditions that we need to develop between the countries on its local implementation. There are also international carriers competing against our carriers. There is need for terms and conditions on how they operate within the joint EAC airspace.

A multilateral air service agreement for international carriers would need to be agreed on by the region so that we can sit with the likes of Emirates and Etihad and discuss their frequencies in our airspace. This will open the incentives they can offer our airlines in their space.

What is slowing down the process?

States are looking to their own interests, with some seeking favourable terms. The sticking issue is agreeing on these terms and conditions allowing us to operate an Open Skies policy. In trying to achieve the open skies within EAC, states have come up with different requirements.

For instance, Kenya said that for a carrier to benefit, its local ownership must be above 51 per cent, but the other countries did not mind the shareholding condition and instead sought operational control by their civil aviation authorities. This was one of the disagreements.

Kenya climbed down on this position and agreed to a 35 per cent shareholding but some countries that are now starting or reviving national airlines changed tack again and pushed for both majority local ownership and effective control of operations.

The second challenge has been the ratification of some bilateral air agreements that needs to be done by regional countries to ensure fully open domestic skies.

What are the likely benefit from the Category One status accorded Kenya by the US?

The first benefit is that our carriers will be able to fly to the United States. And this is not just for Kenya Airways but for any other carriers. This is important to Kenya because JKIA can now become an African hub. Over 60 per cent of the passenger traffic on that route will be Americans travelling to Africa, making Nairobi a perfect hub for American investment.

How has KCAA managed the increased air traffic to Nairobi?

We redesigned our airspace using a new masterplan. We increased capacity on the busiest routes. For instance, Nairobi-Mombasa is the busiest route, with 20 flights a day.

Initially, we will use one track but different altitudes for aircraft, but we have created parallel airways on this route. This means that we can now have multiple aircraft using these routes simultaneously, going in either direction, thereby increasing efficiency in managing airspace and in airline operations.

We have also done this on the Nairobi-Kisumu and Eldoret routes and are in the process of doing a similar intervention in Wajir to cater for the increased number of flights to Somalia.

We have also invested in new equipment for communication, navigation and surveillance. We have invested in a controller-pilot datalink, which is a text-based system that allows us to give instructions to pilots via text messages.

This is mostly used in oceanic airspace, which we see being implemented by Middle Eastern airlines that enter our airspace from Mogadishu and headed to Southern Africa.

We also introduced automatic dependent surveillance communication and aeronautical message handling systems, which is high data communication between states. It allows us to share flight plans with countries that airplanes will be traversing as they head to their destinations.

We have also introduced a performance-based navigation system to assist airlines to map shorter routes for their destination to improve efficiency.