With about two weeks to the resumption of flights on August 1st, National Carrier RwandAir is working on changes with an aim to improve the safety of passengers amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Like other airlines across the world, RwandAir will be making adjustments on a number of inflight aspects to reduce physical contact and chances of reduction of contracting the virus. Gobena Mikael, the Chief Commercial Officer of RwandAir said that the resumption will be characterized by adjustment to improve both passenger and crew safety. Mikael was speaking at a webinar on the Impact of Covid-19 on the East African Aviation sector convened by the East African Business Council. The move is also aimed at ensuring passenger confidence in flights following weeks of halted operations. Among the changes Mikael noted will be rolled out include the elimination of inflight reading material to avoid physical contact. For airlines meals and snack services, Mikael said that there is going to be a significant amendment from regular service to serving bottled drinks and packed snacks consequently reducing contacts between crew and passengers. He noted that while this might be considered as reduction of level of service, it is geared at improving the safety of the crew and passengers during flights. For long haul flights, RwandAir will adopt a lunch box type hot meal as opposed to the regular dinner, lunch and drinks service. Other materials such as headsets, duvets and headrests, he said will be taken out, sanitized and replaced at the end of every trip. “For materials such as headsets, duvets, headrests they will be sanitized and resealed. At the end of the trip, we will take them out and put new ones. Every seat belt, tray, and everything that is touched we have devised mechanisms to sanitize and clean them,” he said. “We have everything in place at the moment, temperature checks, social distancing measures and signs, desk shields and visors, everyone is required to wear a mask, gowns for the crew,” he added. While there have been widespread fears that the cost of tickets will go up as there is likely to be fewer passengers, Mikael noted that as opposed costs going up, they are likely to go down with increased competition and confidence building. “The costs will go down, how can we expect to encourage people and bring confidence? We have to look at our customers as if they are in power, they don’t have to travel, and they have to feel safe,” he said. For instance, RwandAir will be introducing bonus mileage, flexible pricing, and refunds without charge among other things to be more attractive to consumers. On regional airlines survival and recovery, he said that the region’s airlines have to work together in multiple aspects such as cooperation and sharing information to make sure they can stay ahead of the pandemic and to avoid having to halt operations in the event confirmed cases increase. With closer collaboration, he said that the regional airlines will be able to learn patterns of the ailment and curb it without much interruption to operations. The same cooperation, he said will serve the purpose in avoiding the onslaught of smaller regional airlines by major global airlines. As opposed to protectionism, he proposed competition on the basis of aspects such as quality and delivery. Kenyan Airways which resumed flights this week will be relying on domestic flights in the short term as they wait for the re-opening of regional airspaces. The airline’s Chief Executive Allan Kilavuka said that to improve recovery chances, regional countries should review the bilateral air service agreements to reduce the costs of travel between countries and consequently stimulate air travel. Kilavuka noted that going forward, airlines are likely to work on reducing base costs and overheads to make the airlines leaner and effective. Further, he noted that the period had shown new business models and approaches such as cargo which had grown popular in recent months. For instance, RwandAir has been using some of its passenger planes for cargo which has revealed the existence of a market and demand. However, even with the re-opening of the airport and resumption of flights, Air Tanzania Chief Executive Ladislaus Matindi said that one ought not to expect an immediate resumption of business activities and clientele flow. He said that from experience in recent months, despite maintaining operations while other airlines were not flying, they hardly had any outbound flights as most countries airspaces were closed. He however said that in the coming days as more countries consider opening up, business is likely to resume albeit slowly.
