Mesfin Tasew , the chief operating officer, COO of Ethiopian Airlines is an experienced African aviation professional.
Mr. Mesfin joined Ethiopian Airlines in 1984 as Associate Engineer and progressed through the ladder and served in supervisory and managerial positions in the technical areas.
In this interview with Aviation journalists in Lagos on Thursday, Mesfin speaks on the relevance of its Maintenance Repair and Overhaul MRO, Facilities to the airline industry in Africa, the need for the government to play an active and driver role of facilitating the development of the sector, plans to collaborate with Aero Contractor on its MRO, need for financial discipline for African airline operators, among others.
Franklin Ihejirika who was at the briefing in Lagos reports
Excepts
What is your next plan now that Enugu Airport is closed for maintenance repairs?
Since the Enugu Airport is closed, and to serve people in that region, we have planned to shift our operations to Port-Harcourt Airport until when Enugu is ready, we will go back there.
Why are Nigerian airlines not patronising your MRO facilities. Are you not marketing it enough for them?
As at today, Ethiopian Airlines has the biggest MRO facility in Africa. We repair all Boeing models of aircraft except 747, we also repair Airbus A350 aircraft, the state of the art and the newest aircraft, we also repair the Bombardier Q400 in Addis Ababa. We have six hangars, we have a very big engine shops, we have several components repair shops. We have been doing this for several decades now. Primarily, it was developed to support the operations of Ethiopian airlines. We are also supporting different African Airlines from different parts of Africa including Asky in Togo. I came from Addis Ababa yesterday, and I saw Arik Air Q400 going to Addis Ababa for C check. We repair many aircraft from Nigeria, including former Air Nigeria, Chachangi and Bellview Airline. We support many of them, even, we have our engineers here supporting them.
Are you looking at collaborating with Aero on its MRO
We are looking for a dependable partner to jointly establish MRO facility in Nigeria. We had some discussions earlier with some companies including Aero Contractors, but unfortunately we have not reached agreement with any party, but we are still looking for a partner to work together.
Do you give African carriers some concession as a way of supporting them
We are ready and willing to support African carriers in respect of MRO services because it requires investment to establish MRO facilities which small African airlines cannot afford. It also required trained human resource, we don’t have so many schools to train Africans as aircraft technicians, engineers, pilots, it takes time and experience. You have to get trained people, even if you get trained people, you need some experience. Most African airlines are small and they cannot afford to have their own MRO facilities, so they need support. So Ethiopian airlines is here to support them in different ways, one approach is that when they do their airline operations, we give them what we call total maintenance support. It means we can send our people at their location to maintain their aircraft initially, we can also deploy spare parts at their locations so that they focus on transporting people and goods, but the same time as they grow, we encourage them to start their own small MRO capabilities little by little. For example, they can do what we call line maintenance which means they can have few qualified and certified engineers to do small checks when the aircraft fly like transit checks, rectifying some defects, then as they grow further, they can do major airframe maintenance. They can establish small shops to repair the wheels, battery shops and the likes. Finally they need support on major repairs like airframe, engines and spare parts repairs, we can support them from a distance. This how we think we can better support them, regarding engine maintenance, it requires very high investment, they can’t afford it, Ethiopian Airlines has invested a lot in this area, so they don’t have that kind of investors as it stand, but in the other hand because we are located in East Africa and to get closer to the airlines, we would like to establish MRO facilities in West Africa, central Africa and Southern Africa and to do that we need partners who have the local knowledge.
How many airlines do you do MRO works In Africa
As at today, we support several African Airlines from West Africa, our major client is Asky in Lome, Togo, as I said earlier, at least these two carriers in Nigeria, from East Africa Rwand Air, from Kenya, Jumbo jet, Congo Airways, Cameroonian Airline, from South, TAAG. Angola, and another airline from Angola, Malawian airline, Lam Mozambique and others.
How much do you generate from your MRO annually?
Our annual MRO revenue is not big, annually we generate around $80million annually. We want to maximise this because we are developing more internal capabilities on engines, components, so our revenue is expected to grow faster.
You said you need dependable partner in Nigeria to collaborate with, what are the things you are looking at to partner with Nigerians?
The first is interest, the second one is commitment, they should be committed in terms of investment, requirement, leadership, commitment to getting the local requirements like getting the land, permissions, facilitating the local government requirements. The partner should have a good reputation or good history .
How far have your airline gone with the plans to establish a new airline in Nigeria in partnership with willing Nigerian investors?
We have established so many airlines in Africa in partnerships with local governments, local investors in different parts of Africa, including the neighbouring Togo. Now we have signed an MoU with another country in West Africa. We had several discussions in Nigeria and up till now none of them have matured yet, we are still under discussion.
How would you describe the open skies for Africa which is not working because of suspicions here and there. What are the hindrances and how do we pull through these hindrances?
You might have heard from different sources that today around 80percent of African traffic is carried by non African carriers. It means African shares is only 20 percent, that 20 percent is carried by Royal Air Marroc, Ethiopian Airline, Egypt Air, South African airlines, mainly, the others are very small airlines. There is a big market for African Airlines, we have to take our reasonable shares from this market. But we can only take this share when we Africans partner. we are brothers as African citizens, that is what we are encouraging. Unfortunately many start-up African airlines didn’t succeed. Some will start up and close, start-up and close.The problem is internal capacity, capacity in leadership, capacity in deployment of resources, we don’t have the right vision individually, so we have to cooperate on commercial front, maintenance, technical fronts, in developing human resources. One of the critical problems of African airlines is that we don’t have enough trained aviation professionals, so we have to cooperate, but unfortunately, we didn’t succeed for different reasons, one is lack of leadership, commitments from African government’s, and lack of discipline from those leading those African airlines. Airline business requires very stringent discipline, discipline in leadership, commitment, we have to calculate that, if you don’t control your cost you won’t succeed. If you cannot develop long time strategy you cannot succeed. So the government has to play an active role, the driver role in facilitating the development of the sector
