Air Seychelles

Another plane to come … while we look ahead for our Dreamliner

Incredible how things can develop in this country and within a short period of time, see what is happening. Congratulation bestowed on Capt. David Savy, CEO of Air Seychelles, for wining the Lions Club accolade of Best Business Personality of 2007 for his hard work to turn Air Seychelles, from parastatal slump to an international profitable airline with a magic wand.

Now Capt. Savy cannot continue to rest, soon after, from a communiqué, he informed us that the airline will be leasing a third aircraft, a Boeing 767-200 from a UK based, leasing company for 30 months… to cater, as pointed out to the increasing number of visitors to our shores and increasing demand on regional & European routes as well… and last but not least, celebrating over 30 years of both domestic & international operations.

For many of us…, even in the head of Capt. Savy the regional routes seemed to be a headache to managed because of the several steps, back steps, ‘faux pas’ we took over the years… May times we have been told that regional routes is growing, bring in another aircraft, performed and then sold or returned the aircraft, for the reasons as the routes are not profitable etc…

Or is the decision on the type of aircraft selected wrong and therefore not suitable for the selected routes.

Between the 1980s-1990s, Flight to neighbouring “island of Mauritius were serviced by large Boeing 747, of British Airways and Air France, from their European routes.  Introduction to Far East destinations were introduced by Ligne Aereanne Seychelles, to Singapore.

Air Seychelles started and evolved with aircraft mostly Boeing from 707s, 757s 767s, 737 and now looking ahead or the Dreamliner 787.

At the time when we were operating our first B767-200, Air Seychelles acquired a B757 to serve the regional routes (Dubai, Mauritius, Singapore, Mumbai, South Africa) but, the constraints of cargo space capacity, limited cabin space and other technical problems forced the airline to return the B757 after a few years of operations.

The airline then leased another B767-200 to enhance and to be able to provide the extra capacity that was needed to service these routes (these 2 aircraft was named Vallee-de-Mai and Aldabra.  A bit later returned the older B767-200 to be replaced by a brand new 767-300ER.  Later on Air Seychelles decided to bring in a third aircraft, a new generation, B737-700 named Amirantes, able to carry around 120 passengers and limited cargo capacity as to manage extra fuel loads on regional routes.  This was a chaos for the airline as cargo was often weeks late, demand on these routes were high, and passengers were very furious.  Even bookings had to be queued well in advance at Air Seychelles as per seat availability, because a fair share of seat were reserved for Air Mauritius in a code sharing agreement… in all a total fiasco!

Soon it was found that we need to return the other B767-200 and Air Seychelles leased another B767-300ER.  Unfortunately too, it had to return the B737-700NG because it was unsuitable for the regional routes.  The regional routes always maintained its demand and peak –up in special periods such as holidays and Christmas.  So therefore, one of its B737-300 aircraft had to service the regional routes, while also doing the international routes of London, & Rome.  The other aircraft is mostly used to service the Paris route with almost 6 flights per week, in a code sharing agreement with Air France.  This in itself is putting a lot of pressure on the two aircraft as we face growing demand.

Now we fall back again to lease another second hand B767-200 to service the Regional Routes?

The biggest mistake we may be committing is the fact that we are configuring a smaller B767-200 aircraft in a 220 passenger seating capacity, compared to the B767-300, having around 236 seats capacity and more spacious.  We are in a way sardine-packing the aircraft with Seychellois and international visitors alike for the sake of meeting maximum capacity in a more or less economy status... This fall short of Air Seychelles reputation, which reversely represent a situation of the low cost, no frill cheap airline, which if this is the case, then the air fares should be quiet reasonable, not that highly exorbitant as it stands today on regional routes.

The other mistake is passenger & cargo load capacity which is huge on these routes and, where a single passenger often average a 50kg baggage load or even higher, compared to the allowable 20 Kg.  Again passenger often bring in the cabin extra luggage load averaging 5-10 kg.  Most often a high percentage of passengers on these routes are overweight and the aircraft more or less full on most of its flights.  We also have not been told on the age of this aircraft and its safety records, as we are going to be jam-packed into an unknown aircraft.

In a few years from now, we would return the 3 aircraft to majestically operate the B787-dreamliner.  Again will these two new superb aircraft served our regional routes, profitably viable, as to its grandiose legacy attributes?  For sure it will provide the status on the European routes and new growing potential markets.

What will happen to the regional routes?  Will we go back again, confused on what aircraft to lease, or will we be asking the Wright brothers to lease us their wooden make-shift aircraft, or we go back to the Karanja-Kampala steamboats?

Contributed