African carrier Korongo Airlines has taken the courageous decision to voluntarily close its domestic flight operations within the Democratic Republic of Congo after the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) declared all navigational aids for domestic airports as in default and non-compliant. It is understood, according to a recently published NOTAM, that all VOR and ILS equipment serving Congo’s domestic airports, are now out of service, forcing airlines to fly their approach under visual flight rules (VFR) conditions only.
The strong stance was taken by ICAO after it had become clear through a series of audits that aviation regulators in the African country were making little or no progress in updating and installing additional safety equipment. After addressing a moratorium to the Democratic Republic of Congo Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in 2003 to recalibrate its equipment, nothing has been done to address ICAO’s request over the subsequent eleven years.
“This means we can no longer operate under IFR [instrument flight rules] conditions,” Christophe Allard, chief executive officer, Korongo Airlines told The HUB during an interview this week. “In accordance with the prescribed regulatory national and international guidelines we suspended all of our domestic flights from 17:00 on June 2, 2014.”
It is understood that at this time no formal mandate has been made by the Democratic Republic of Congo CAA and Korongo Airlines is currently the only carrier that has suspended its domestic flights. “All other operators keep flying without any constraint in full contradiction to the ICAO regulation,” said Allard.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has one of the worst air accident record and ICAO alongside the International Air Transport Association (IATA) have been working hand in hand to improve operational safety through audits and by strengthening the regulatory oversight regime in order to improve the safety of operations in the country.
As a joint venture between Belgian national carrier Brussels Airlines, the Forrest Group and local Congolese investors, Korongo Airlines has been working to enhance safety standards in the country and by operating under an ACMI contract with Brussels Airlines, it flies under approved EASA and IOSA standards. The carrier launched scheduled flights linking its headquarters in the south eastern city Lubumbashi with the capital Kinshasa and Johannesburg in South Africa in April 2012. The Johannesburg link continues to operate and has not been affected by the ruling as the ILS remains in place for flights into Lubumbashi.
“We are aware that we may be the only ones to take our responsibilities seriously but we remain convinced that the commitment of Korongo Airlines to operate in full compliance with the relevant Congolese and international aviation safety standards is the only way, the only one to make a difference in the interests of our passengers,” explained Allard.
“We are aware that our passengers are the first affected by this situation, we hope that the Congolese authorities will take all necessary steps to allow us a resumption of flights in complete safety and in accordance with the regulations in force,” he added.
Korongo Airlines is even offering to pre-finance a remedy to enable the navigational equipment to be calibrated and permit it to resume its domestic flying. The carrier hopes to source a specialised aircraft capable of calibrating the VOR/DME on behalf of CAA and is requesting a transition period of three months to organise these flights and the temporary lifting of the NOTAM to enable it to complete this and resume its domestic services. “Contact relating to this option has been made with ICAO through our shareholder Brussels Airlines,” added Allard.
Christophe Allard, chief executive officer, Korongo Airlines is among the high profile African aviation executives that will be attending the forthcoming Routes Africa forum that takes place in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe from June 22-24, 2014.
Ward Bonduel, chief commercial officer, Korongo Airlines, had explained to The HUB at last year’s Routes Africa in Kampala, Uganda that the carrier was flying in achallenging marketplace. “The Democratic Republic of Congo is not the easiest place to operate an airline. It is an ever changing environment,” he said. Although the carrier operates to approved IOSA standards it is still included in European Commission’s blacklist due to the blanket ban on airlines from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“We try to push the fact that we exceed international quality compliance levels and that is important in an environment like the Democratic Republic of Congo where you have a really bad history with regards to air safety,” said Bonduel. “We want to be a reliable partner and reach out to corporate, organisations and Non-Government Organisations to fly with us but we are automatically included on the EU blacklist due to having a local licence.”
The carrier has been working to try and find a way it can be exempted from this blanket ban and is being supported by the Belgian Government to try and see if it can be removed. “It is not really up to us to do this and should be the task of Democratic Republic of Congo Government,” said Bonduel.
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