Travel in Africa: Let Africans Fly

非洲航运：让非洲人起飞

 

Air travel in Africa is needlessly hard and costly. Open skies would make it cheaper

由于不必要的原因，非洲航空旅行艰巨而昂贵。开放领空可降低成本

 

Few places still capture the romance (and frustration) of the early days of flight quite as Africa does. Although air travel in the continent is safer and more common than ever before, it still has some charming anachronisms. In Nigeria everyone applauds when the plane touches down. On tiny propeller-driven planes in Botswana the cabin attendants hand you a little bag of biltong, the dried meat that once fed people on long overland treks. In Tanzania, where on some flights almost half the passengers are taking to the skies for the first time, many of the faces in the cabin betray a sense of wonder tinged with fear.

 

少有地方能像非洲那样，仍保有早期航空旅行的浪漫色彩（以及挫折感）。虽然非洲大陆上的航空旅运比早前更安全也更普遍，但依然有不少可爱的特色，令人有时光倒流之感。在尼日利亚，飞机着陆时，机上所有人会鼓掌。在博茨瓦纳的小型螺旋桨飞机上，乘务员会给你递上一小包比尔通（biltong）——以前人们长途跋涉时用以充饥的肉干。在坦桑尼亚，一些航班上，几近半数的乘客是第一次坐飞机，机舱里许多人的脸上半带惊叹半带恐惧。

 

Yet African airlines feel like a prop-blast from the past in regrettable ways, too. In most places, schedules are about as reliable as they were when planes could take off or land only in clear weather. Tickets are costly. Routes are convoluted: a passenger wanting to fly from Algiers to Lagos may have to go via Europe, turning a four-and-a-half-hour journey into one that takes at least nine hours. Most airlines are state-owned and protected from competition. Like a lot of national carriers elsewhere, they tend to be chronically unprofitable and to need frequent bail-outs from taxpayers.

 

然而，让人遗憾的是，非洲的航空公司也像一股过去喷出的气流。在大多数地方，时刻表的准确性跟以往飞机只能在晴天起飞降落的年代差不多。机票价格昂贵。航线复杂混乱：乘客若想从阿尔及尔飞往拉各斯可能须经欧洲转飞，原本四个半小时的旅程变成至少要九个小时。非洲大多数航空公司为国有企业，被保护免受竞争挑战。与其他地方的许多国有航空公司一样，它们往往长期亏损，经常需要纳税人的资金纾困。

 

Across Africa, airlines wanting to fly new routes from one country to another need the agreement of both governments first. Getting this can take years of lobbying and, in some cases, bribes. If the airline is not owned by one of the two states, its chances of winning permission nosedive. Fastjet, a London-listed low-cost carrier with operations across Africa, had to wait three years for a green light to fly between Tanzania and neighbouring Kenya. Zimbabwe recently announced that it would not let any airline besides its national carrier fly from Harare to London – although Air Zimbabwe does not currently service this route, for fear that as soon as its planes land they will be impounded by creditors.

 

在非洲各国，航空公司想要开通跨国新航线，首先需获两国政府同意。这可能需要多年的游说，在某些情况下甚至需要行贿。如果航空公司属第三国所有，获批机会更将大跌。业务遍及非洲的伦敦上市廉价航空公司Fastjet等候三年才获批开辟从坦桑尼亚飞往邻国肯尼亚的航线。津巴布韦最近宣布不允许其国家航空公司以外的其他公司经营从哈拉雷飞往伦敦的航线——尽管津巴布韦航空公司（Air Zimbabwe）目前并未开通这一航线，怕的是飞机一着陆便被债权人扣押。

 

Closed markets carry jumbo-sized costs. It is not just that badly run African state airlines lose money ($300m last year, or $3.84 for every airline ticket sold on the continent). Far bigger are the opportunity costs. Lousy air links inhibit trade, exports and investment. In many parts of the world air travel grows about twice as fast as GDP. In Africa it has been expanding by about 5% a year, which is slower than the 6% or so that economic growth has averaged over the past decade.

 

封闭的市场背负着巨大的成本。不但经营不善的非洲国有航空公司在亏损（去年亏了三亿美元，即在非洲每卖出一张机票就亏掉3.84美元），机会成本更是大得多。差劲的航线网络限制了贸易、出口及投资。在全球许多地方，航空旅运的增长速度是GDP的两倍。但在非洲，该行业的年增长一直约为5%，低于过去十年6%左右的平均经济增长率。

 

The lesson from other parts of the world is that when markets are freed, fares fall. This stimulates a huge increase in air travel and gives a boost to all the businesses that depend on mobility. In African countries that have liberalised a bit, this has indeed happened: after a bilateral open-skies deal, fares between South Africa and Zambia fell by almost 40% and passenger numbers rose nearly as much. After Morocco opened its market to European airlines in 2005, the number of passengers jumped by 160% and the number of routes more than tripled, from 83 to 309 in eight years.

 

世界其他地区的经验是，市场开放，票价便会下降。这会刺激航空旅运大幅增长，促进所有依赖流动性的行业发展。在市场稍有放开的非洲国家，这的确已发生：签署开放领空的双边协议后，南非和赞比亚之间的航班票价下降了近40%，客运量增长也接近40%。摩洛哥在2005年向欧洲航空公司开放市场后，乘客数量跃升160%，航线数量增加了两倍多，在八年间从83条增加至309条。

 

A study commissioned by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), a club of big airlines, estimates that if just 12 of Africa’s bigger economies opened their skies to one another, fares would fall by more than a third and traffic between them would soar by 81%, to roughly 11m passengers. More than 155,000 new jobs would be created, and $1.3 billion would be added to GDP. This may well be an underestimate, given Africa’s vast size and sparse, shoddy road network, which is about a fifth as dense as the world average and mostly unpaved. Where air travel expands, so do unexpected new industries, such as growing roses in Kenya for export to Europe.

 

由国际航空运输协会（IATA，大型航空公司的联盟）委托进行的一项研究估计，只要非洲12个最大经济体相互开放领空，机票价格便可下降超过三分之一，而这些国家之间的客运量将飙升81%，到约1100万人次。将因此创造超过15.5万个新职位，增加13亿美元的GDP。这很可能还低估了实际情况，毕竟非洲辽阔荒芜，劣质的公路网络分布密度约为全球平均水平的五分之一，而且大多为非铺装道路。航空旅运扩展之处，意想不到的新产业也会发展起来，比如在肯尼亚种植出口欧洲的玫瑰。

 

Fly freedom

自由飞行

 

In 1988 most African governments signed up to the Yamoussoukro Declaration, pledging to open their skies. To date not one has done so fully (although some, such as South Africa, have opened up a lot). Rather than encouraging competition, most African leaders seem more concerned with mollycoddling their bust national carriers. This provides jobs for pals and jets that can be commandeered for presidential shopping trips to Paris. But it is terrible for Africa. The continent will struggle to take off economically while its people are stuck on the runway. Time to let Africans fly.

 

1988年，非洲大多数国家签署了《亚穆苏克罗宣言》（Yamoussoukro Declaration），承诺开放领空。迄今，没有一个国家完全履行了当初的承诺（但南非等一些国家已经开放了很多）。大多数非洲国家领导人似乎更关注保护亏损的国有航空公司，而非鼓励竞争。这能为亲信输送职位，也方便总统到巴黎购物时征用飞机。但对非洲来说，这是坏事。非洲大陆的经济将难以起飞，民众会被困跑道。是时候让非洲人起飞了。

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