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Helping Africa Take to the Skies
Visiting Scholar Bridget Ssamula Explores a Hub-and-Spoke System for the Continent
Air travel would seem to be a mode that is especially suited to Africa, given the continent's vastness, its often challenging terrain, and the high cost of building and maintaining the highways, railroads and bridges that a surface transportation system needs. Yet the African airline market is fragmented and inefficient, with some 50 national airlines, most of them losing money or heavily subsidized, resulting in high ticket prices and inconvenient routing. "One of the greatest ironies is that in order to fly to Morocco from most parts of Africa, the easiest route is through Europe," notes Bridget Ssamula.
Ssamula, a Ph.D. student at the University of Pretoria, is doing research that makes the case for an alternative to the current system. She recently concluded three months as a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Transportation Studies, where she worked with Adib Kanafani, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, on studying the potential for a hub-and-spoke route network of regional airlines to lower air transportation costs and make air travel on the African continent more efficient, which would in turn encourage more regional travel and spur economic growth.
Hub-and-spoke routing works by feeding passengers from many origins along spokes to central waypoints, the hubs, where they are consolidated and sent to various destinations. Although individual passengers may have to travel longer distances than if they were to fly direct, the monetary savings from the economies of scale enjoyed from more efficient use of airplanes and crew time should be great enough to offset the inconvenience of the extra stop.
In the U.S., hub-and-spoke routing is practically universal. Airlines adopted it after the industry was deregulated in 1978, freeing them from the obligation to fly money-losing routes to smaller markets. The central ingredient for a hub-and-spoke system's success is that airlines operate most efficiently when their planes are in the air for the greatest time possible at the highest load factor possible in a way that can be easily coordinated with maintenance and crewing schedules.
Many hurdles to overcome
In the case of Africa, Ssamula acknowledges, the logistical and political hurdles to installing such a system are formidable. "Aviation is a very politically governed industry," she notes in her paper, "Analysing Cost Effective Strategies to Create a Hub Network in Africa," which she wrote with Professor Christo Venter, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Pretoria.
Most of the international airports in Africa are served by government-owned airlines. They are an integral part of the parent country's national identity. Ssamula likened people's identification with their country's airline to their affection for a national sports team.
Political considerations can take precedence over standard business considerations in the choice of destinations, staffing, aircraft purchases, and financing. The result is often inefficient and at times unsafe operations. Finally, there are few airports with the physical capacity to handle the large number of flights and passengers needed to support a hub-and-spoke enterprise.
The result is a chronic cycle of money-losing airlines cutting routes and raising fares, or tapping government subsidies, with accompanying reductions in passengers and market share and the exclusion of all but the wealthiest customers.
Jokes are made about struggling African airlines, she noted, like one where the pilot comes on the intercom halfway through the flight to say that he will be landing to refuel. "But it's not a joke," she said. Africa is a potentially large and lucrative market, and developing its airline industry would benefit all the governments on the continent, she noted.
Demand for intra-continental air travel is robust, she said. "Even after 9-11, the statistics stayed strong." That is due to a number of factors. Because the continent is so large, many multi-national organizations that do business there are forced to operate several regional headquarters, and there is a constant flow of personnel among them. Most trade flows through West Africa and South Africa because that is where the major seaports are located, and air cargo is necessary to complete the supply chain, especially for the many landlocked countries and regions.
How it would work
Ssamula's hub-and-spoke system would be built around four regional operations, one for each section of the continent, East, South, West and North. Hubs could operate out of the leading cities in each region. With the economies of scale, the cost of flying would fall, enabling more regional travel, which in turn would translate into economic growth. Also, Ssamula notes, the presence of a large, busy airport is in itself an economic stimulus.
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But the significance extends beyond the continent.
"Why aviation is so important is that Africa is a regional gateway. It connects America to Asia. You can fly from New York JFK to Australia in 26 hours via Johannesburg. And a lot of people from Asia are flying to South Africa to get to America."
Tourism is doing well in select portions of the continent, she said. The busiest destinations are South Africa, the Mauritias, and Kenya, which draw visitors for their parks and other natural attractions.
There already exist regional trade organizations, on which the new network could be built, she explained. "They have been run very efficiently," and have been successful in rationalizing trade policies such as customs clearances and visa and passport requirements. And preliminary steps have been taken to set the stage for deregulating the African airline market with the 1988 Yamoussoukro Decision. "That would be a stepping stone," she said. However, Ssamula notes that geo-political considerations still must be addressed and will entail difficult political trade-offs.
Ssamula came to ITS on the recommendation of two of her professors, Emile Horak, who heads the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Pretoria, and her supervising faculty member, Christo Venter, who received his Ph.D. from Berkeley under ITS Professor Mark Hansen.
Ssamula, who has returned to the University of Pretoria, will continue her research and expand on her work.
