Thirty-Four Ways to Kill an Airline Before Take-off

Esther Nachula, Africa Works, Lusaka | 21st October 2025 — Nigeria slaps 34 separate charges on airlines before a single wheel leaves the tarmac. Rwanda demands $31,000 for the same airport services that cost $12 in South Africa. Botswana sits somewhere in the middle at $16,000. Africa loses $400 million each year in uncollected overflight fees floating through SADC airspace, yet the airlines bleeding money cannot catch a break on ground handling monopolies or fuel surcharges. When industry chiefs gathered at the Airlines Association of Southern Africa (AASA) 2025 Conference, they came with balance sheets full of red ink and questions about how much longer they could keep flying. The answers pointed to an uncomfortable reality that nobody wanted to name directly but everyone understood: 54 African governments want the economic benefits of aviation while systematically strangling the industry that delivers them.

Profit Margins That Cannot Absorb Shocks

Professor M. John Lamola, leading South African Airways through its rebuilding phase, described what keeps him awake at night. Customer expectations have evolved dramatically through technology and social change, yet airlines must balance those expectations against brutal economics. He searches constantly for the right combination of capacity and pricing—a balance that keeps shifting.

SAA inherited customer expectations from its award-winning past but operates fourteen-year-old aircraft in all-economy configurations because global supply chain chaos left no better options. Prof. Lamola explained that even profitable airlines deliberately lose money on certain routes to stimulate traffic and prove market viability, though this reality proves difficult for board members to accept. Fill every seat at rock-bottom prices and the airline still fails. Price too high and passengers vanish to competitors who do not carry the same cost burden.

Mr. Anthony Irwin faces identical pressures running Proflight Zambia. His airline employs 300 people who pay local taxes, support families, and contribute to the Zambian economy. A fifth-freedom carrier competing on the same routes employs 15 people in the country. The foreign carrier faces fewer regulatory hurdles and lower operational costs despite extracting revenue from the same market.

Proflight fights back with what Mr. Irwin calls firecracker fares—extremely low prices on flights with poor load factors to generate some revenue and expose more people to flying. The airline moved to 24-hour maintenance schedules to maximize fleet availability from aging aircraft. Distribution costs eat into margins. Finance remains difficult to access. Obtaining necessary permissions and regulatory approvals moves at glacial speed. Mr. Irwin's immediate focus boils down to basic survival: reducing aircraft-on-ground situations that drain cash and disappoint customers.

Zambia does not allow airlines to handle their own ground services; the airport company manages most functions, creating a monopoly that drives costs upward. The regulatory framework prevents competition that could reduce these costs.

Managing Eighty Percent Unknowns

Mr. Kamil Al-Awadhi, Regional Vice President for the International Air Transport Association, described running an airline as "the worst job anybody can have." The reason? "The biggest part of it is the unknown. There is more unknown than known." Running an airline means managing unknowns that constitute 80 percent of daily decision-making.

Running an airline in Africa makes that impossible job worse. The continent has the world's highest operating costs. Those 34 charges in Nigeria exemplify how governments treat aviation as a revenue source rather than an economic enabler. "54 states in Africa work against the aviation industry, but they want to reap the benefits," he said. Rules get customized to punish local carriers. Costs climb while governments refuse transparency about expenses, preventing IATA from calculating fair pricing.

Mr. Al-Awadhi challenged anyone to find an airport that reduced fees after completing infrastructure improvements. Prices rise to fund construction but never fall once projects finish. Monopolies drive prices up and quality down. Competition in airport services would reverse both trends, but governments protect their revenue streams.

The Southern African Development Community demonstrates this dysfunction across national boundaries. Rwanda charges 536,000 Rand for airline access. Botswana demands 274,000 Rand. The Democratic Republic of Congo extracts 70,000 Rand seasonally, plus charges for every codeshare agreement. South Africa requires only 200 Rand for identical market access. Airlines attempting pan-African networks must employ specialists just to track these disparate requirements.

Moving Goats While Governments Collect Fees

Dr. Namhla Tshetu, an executive with Airlink, highlighted how airlines bear responsibility for failures throughout the aviation ecosystem because passengers hold contracts with carriers, not with air traffic services, airports, or regulators.

When livestock wander onto runways, airline staff clear them. "We have had to move goats, sheep, and you know all sorts of animal from the runway. That is not our job. But we are doing it so that we can provide a service."

Only 59% of ticket revenue actually reaches the airline. The remaining 41% disappears into fees, charges, and levies before the carrier sees a cent. Smaller markets face identical cost structures without passenger volume to absorb expenses, Dr. Namhla noted.

Dr. Namhla observed that industry executives discuss identical problems at every conference while the ministers and heads of state who could implement solutions never attend. Problems get identified with precision, solutions get articulated clearly, then everyone returns home and the system continues unchanged.

What Aviation Actually Needs

Prof. Lamola framed aviation as an economic enabler where every arriving passenger contributes to broader prosperity. African governments should support the industry the way the United States supports air access. Instead, the current approach risks forcing airlines to compete so destructively under unfair conditions that everyone loses.

Mr. Ndumiso Shongwe, Eswatini General Manager, emphasized collaboration between airports, air traffic services, and airlines to reduce costs. His immediate focus centres on predictive and preventive maintenance to avoid the expensive disasters of aircraft-on-ground situations. Three years of collected statistics now guide every cost decision.

The solutions exist. What remains absent is the political will to implement them and the regulatory framework to make competition fair. Until then, airlines will keep moving goats off runways, flying suboptimal aircraft, and calculating which routes they can afford to lose money on this month. The 34 charges in Nigeria demonstrate missed opportunity—proof that African governments still see aviation as something to tax rather than something to build economies around.