Lois Jones/DAKAR David Learmount/CAPE TOWN
Air traffic services (ATS) in many parts of Africa are already unable to cope with current traffic levels, never mind increased demand. Meanwhile, wars and political instability raging in parts of the continent mean that basic air traffic control (ATC) is often neglected and air-to-ground communication does not exist.
The relaxation of sanctions in South Africa led to the introduction of direct routes over Africa, rather than across the sea, resulting in an explosion of traffic growth over African skies. Traffic over Africa grew by 13.9%, to 5.1 million passengers, in 1996-7 and has increased rapidly during 1998. As the skies fill, a chronic lack of basic air safety measures spells growing danger for the region, particularly the busy north-south and east-west routings across Africa and the point where these routes intercept.
At present, traffic in Africa's skies represents only 3% of the world's air transport activity, points out Trevor Fox, technical director of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in Africa. Given the continent's size, Fox remarks, it would be easy to assume that there is no capacity problem. Growth represents the main difficulty, he explains, added to the fact that the main north-south route between Europe and South Africa has seen far higher growth than that of Africa as a whole. For the future, Fox points out, a growing safety threat combined with ATS inefficiency has the potential to inhibit growth, affecting all "stakeholders", among which Fox numbers the airlines themselves and the states with economies that would fail to reap the benefits.
The number of reported air incidents is sliding. There have been 14 this year, compared with 1997's tally of 30. There have been 17 reports of near misses this year, compared to 26 last year, according to public air safety organisation ASECNA, which represents the French-speaking states in west Africa. "There are some unreported air misses, and data could be very misleading," however, warns Jean-Paul Makosso, head of ASECNA's meteorology department.
COMMUNICATING FOR THE FUTURE
A lack of cash and a poor infrastructure lie at the heart of Africa's inadequate air safety, in an environment where "-problems as well as opportunities are amplified", maintains Fox. He points to "some of the most intractable in frastructural deficiencies" hampering air safety development. These include shortcomings in fixed and mobile communications, direct pilot/ controller communications, including extended VHF, basic ATC tools and personnel training.
"While traffic is growing at an encouraging pace, we have to ensure that developing air traffic management [ATM] systems are capable of meeting the demands of the next century," says Fox. He is convinced that a move to the new communications, navigation and surveillance (CNS)/ATM system will allow Africa to meet growing traffic demand, provided that the system is planned and implemented correctly. Otherwise "-we will never be able to catch up with our European and Asian neighbours".
Speaking later at another venue, the Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) 16-19 November conference in Cape Town, South Africa, Fox conceded that some African states are making a real effort to improve their ATM infrastructures, but that an aeronautical fixed telecommunications network (AFTN) main circuit is perhaps the most basic of the requirements which has yet to be met. This affects all states to some degree, with the worst communications between ATC centres between East and West Africa.
The effects of having no AFTN include, for example, that an aircraft can file a flightplan, but will have completed its flight and landed before advice of its departure and of its estimated time of arrival (ETA) has reached its destination airport. Choosing an affected route, Fox explains: "When you take off from Brazzaville for Nairobi, it's almost certain that you'll take off without [destination] weather [forecast], and you'll arrive before your flight plan or departure message."
Despite the severe shortcomings in air safety, steps are being made in the right direction, largely because of regional co-operation. "Africa must unite for progress," declares Maurice Rajofetra, director general of ASECNA. "The world has become a global village, and the only option left to our states is to share knowledge, expertise and technology. We should be mindful of the intercapability of systems. Our region must co-operate when it comes to an action plan and ensure commonality of equipment to ensure easy maintenance and share the cost of doing this," says Rajofetra.
ORGANISING FOR SAFETY
Organisations such as ASECNA are spreading the air safety message in a bid to increase cooperation. ASECNA now has members in 14 African states, Madagascar and France, and is responsible for managing air navigation over 24 international airports and 100 domestic airports. The organisation intends to spread its coverage to more African countries in the near future, with the ultimate aim of having one organisation dealing with air navigation problems in the whole of Africa.
Mohammed Elamri, director of the air transport bureau of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) appeals to all African nations to join ASECNA, or similar associations, as a way of extending air safety across Africa. Fox, speaking at Cape Town, regretted that, although there are regional groups doing good work within Africa, they do not liaise effectively and there is no forum for the continent as a whole. He added, however, that, although ASECNA appears to be starting to talk to southern Africa's most cohesive infrastructural forum, the South African Development Community (SADC), the two are still not connected by an AFTN.
ASECNA's main objective for 1998-9 is to extend the ATC areas covered by its member states' FIRs in Brazzaville, Dakar, Dakar Oceanic, Ndjamena, Niamey and Tananarive, says Maurice Rajaofetra, director general of ASECNA.
IATA strongly supports ASECNA's efforts, but urges that its actions be driven by ATM objectives and planned correctly. "It is vitally important that planning should be carried out along entire traffic flows. What good will it do if, in the middle of a group of advanced states, we find one which is not able to maintain the pace of its neighbours? The benefits will not materialise," says IATA's Fox.
IATA itself is busy implementing air safety initiatives in the region. The organisation has launched a project to extend VHF coverage and will conduct further surveys of pilot control communications in the first quarter of 1999. Yet, however industrious IATA is in its efforts to alert states to the problems involved, it cannot finance the changes that need to be made, points out Fox.
Lack of funding remains a major hindrance to improved air safety. ASECNA , however, has pledged to invest some CFA21.6 billion ($39.4 million)in new equipment in 1999 in an effort to improve safety in its member states and comply with ICAO standards. The organisation has already completed 44 projects and 100 are targeted for completion in 1999. In 1998-9 some CFA63.9 billion will be invested in 12 new VHF stations, 14 new fire engines and the setting up of a network of representatives across the region to cover emergencies.
ASECNA also plans to invest some CFA10 billion in telecommunications in 1999 and another CFA4.4 billion in 2000. Next year, the organisation will install nine VHF monitoring stations, using the 121.5 frequency, to ensure VHF coverage on east-west and north-south African trunk routes. A radar has been installed at Ndjamena, Chad, which is significant because it is positioned on the main north-south route and also close to where the borders (and thus the FIRs) of Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Niger and Nigeria meet.
The organisation is also injecting funds into computerising CNS/ATM systems in Antannanarivo, Brazzaville, Douala, Libreville and Ndjamena next year. Trials are being conducted in Abidjan, Bamako, Dakar, Niamey, Nouakchott and Ouagadougou. The organisation has spent $276 billion to date on improving CNS/ATM, including $66 billion on infrastructure alone.
As ever, accurate weather forecasting is crucial to safety and efficient operations, so ASECNA intends to invest CFA 1.1 billion in meteorology equipment next year, and to computerise meteorology data collection. ASECNA covers 24 meteorology centres and three telecommunications centres. Makosso sees ASECNA's immediate meteorology objectives as "-trying to plan resources to set up direct communication links with aircraft". Over the longer-term, from 2000-4, ASECNA means to introduce complete and accessible area forecasting, and to improve the detection of hazardous air safety conditions such as poor visibility and storm forecasting, he says.
IATA praises ASECNA's air safety initiatives but, surprisingly, Fox does not consider a lack of funding as the major stumbling block to ATC, provided that civil aviation is operated on "sound business principles". Fox calls for "-dynamic management funding capable of responding rapidly to changing demands; transparency, accountability and fair pricing; an open and competitive business environment; institutionalised dialogue with all stakeholders, such as airline operators, pilots, controllers and economic partners; and financial and managerial autonomy".
SOUTH AFRICAN RESTRUCTURE
At the FSF's Cape Town seminar, South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) chief executive Trevor Abrahams described the restructuring of his organisation, which is being carried out along precisely the lines for which IATA would wish. The SACAA has been devolved from the Department of Transport (DoT) and operates independently, being allowed to charge for its services. Whereas its budget had previously been reducing while air transport was growing rapidly, now its income - and therefore resources - will increase with the size of the industry for which it is responsible. This enables the SACAA to have what Abrahams calls "a sustainable partnership" with the industry it regulates. The Authority remains accountable to the DoT for its actions, explains Abrahams, which "-allows the government to set with high level policy and leaves the CAA with operations and certification policy". It is moving away from being an inspectorate and is concerning itself with safety promotion, quality assurance, auditing, data analysis, and enforcement, he says. Other crucial CAA roles, Abrahams says, include setting up a confidential reporting system and promoting international and regional co-operation.
IATA is helping to raise funds for improved infrastructure via ATC billing and collection agreements. It has now signed billing agreements with Cape Verde, the Democratic Republic of Congo, New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Uganda and Zambia - and Tanzania has asked to join. The billing system improves the rate of fee recovery from as little as 40% to over 80% and provides an "-example of partnership and the co-operation essential to overcome some of the implementation problems which we have in Africa",says Fox.
The airlines, through IATA, are making a local contribution by providing half the funds to train 70 controllers for Angola, with the country itself providing the other half. It has often been said by external agencies trying to influence African safety for the better that it is no use providing funds or training unless the state involved clearly wants to improve and maintain its ATS and air transport infrastructure. Angola is an example of a state which has shown the necessary enthusiasm for improvement. Fox reports that it has recently upgraded its high frequency ATC radio communications, improved its airport security arrangements, fire/emergency services and runway lighting, installed new VOR/DMEs (navigation beacon/distance measuring equipment), and has joined the SADC's intra ATC centre satellite communications network known as VSat. Tanzania, says Fox, has shown an interest in joining
ICAO, meanwhile, is also eager to raise the necessary cash for improved air safety in the region. During ICAO's general assembly in September, the organisation asked that a $1 charge be introduced for every passenger worldwide to finance global safety projects. Yet members from developing countries rejected the proposal, saying that it would mean taking money from them "-to give it to other developing countries", explains Mohammed Elamri, director of ICAO's air transport bureau.
Yet, as recession looms and funds becomes scarce, the airline industry needs to ensure that the necessary investment is still directed towards improving air safety in Africa, and that initiatives like ASECNA's are maintained.
"The African environment is very special and, with global economic recession riding towards us like one of the horsemen out of the apocalypse, it is vital that our transition be carefully planned," says Fox.
SAFETY STRAGGLERS
Africa and south-East Asia, with air accident rates far worse than the world average, are now alone among the world's regions in failing to set up area forums to co-ordinate airline safety policy, experts at the Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) 16-19 November international air safety seminar (IASS) in Cape Town, South Africa, have revealed.
This failure flies in the face of a global consensus, confirmed at the seminar, that regional flight safety improvement, especially where flight safety performance is particularly poor, can only come through locally applied policy based on the area's accident and incident data. Trevor Fox, technical director for the International Air Transport Association in Africa, concedes that there are sub-regional groups within Africa (ASECNA in the north and the South African Development Community, for example), but, he says, they do not liaise effectively and there is no forum for the continent as a whole.
Africa, with a hull loss accident rate of 9.5 per million departures, compared with the world average of 1.4, also shows by far the highest fatal approach and landing accident (ALA) rate, at 2.43 per million flights, the FSF Approach and Landing Accident Reduction Task Force revealed at the IASS. This compares with the next worst ALA figures - for Latin America - at 1.65, and the best, North America, at 0.13. South-East Asia, meanwhile, has a hull loss rate of 2.3 and a fatal ALA rate of 0.88, which is twice as bad as the world average fatal ALA rate of 0.43.
Latin America, however, despite its record as a poor safety performer, has been praised by US and European safety agencies for setting up its own structure for implementing and monitoring flight safety policy regionally. This is vital, according to Capt Luis Garcia, senior vice-president for safety at Mexicana, because air transport in South America is forecast to have the world's second highest growth rate in the next 10 years. Garcia says that the Latin American Aviation Safety Team studies best safety practice elsewhere in the world, then "-adapts, not adopts" it to the region's operational environment and resources. In Latin America's case, he says, that translates into measures which are not expensive, but easy to implement.
Source: Flight International
