Air Afrique - History

History

Air Afrique was originally conceived in February 1960 (1960-02) as a joint subsidiary of Air France and Union Aéromaritime de Transport (UAT) to take over the regional services these airlines had operated in Africa. It was registered in September 1960 as Air Afrique (Société de Transports Aériens en Afrique), and effectively founded on 28 March 1961 as a joint venture between Air France and UAT, each of which had a 17% holding, and eleven newly independent former French colonies in West Africa, namely Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Mauritania, Niger, the Republic of the Congo and Senegal, that contributed with the remaining 66% of the capital.

The objective was the creation of a comprehensive network of internal air services within the countries that co-owned Air Afrique as well as international air services within Africa and beyond. Cheikh Fall was appointed as the first CEO of the company on 25 June 1961. It started operations on 1 August 1961 serving internal routes with 12 leased DC-4s from Air France and UAT. On 15 October 1961, an Air France Lockheed Constellation that flew the Paris–Port Etienne–Dakar–Abidjan–Cotonou–Douala route on behalf of the company inaugurated the long-haul operations. Pressurised Douglas DC-6 aircraft were added to the fleet in the early 1960s, also leased from UAT.

Air Afrique introduced jet aircraft —still leased— on 5 January 1962; two DC-8s were the first jets ordered by the airline in December 1962. Also in 1962, the carrier became a member of the International Air Transport Association.

Following its merger with Transports Aériens Intercontinentaux (TAI) in 1963, UAT passed on its stake in Air Afrique to Union de Transports Aériens (UTA). UTA in turn transferred its stake in Air Afrique to Société pour le Développement du Transport Aérien en Afrique (SODETRAF), as did Air France. SODETRAF was 75%-owned by UTA, while the remaining stake was held by Air France. This resulted in SODETRAF acquiring a 28% stake in the airline under a 15-year agreement.

Togo joined the consortium in 1965; Cameroon withdrew in 1971 and founded its own airline, and so did Gabon in 1976. This gave each of the ten shareholder countries a 6.54% stake.

The airline's long-haul scheduled services also served other major French cities such as Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Toulouse and Bordeaux, as well as Rome Fiumicino in Italy since 1968, Geneva in Switzerland (first flight 6 November 1964) and New York-JFK in the United States (from 18 May 1965). During the 1980s, there was a short-lived service to London-Gatwick in the United Kingdom as well. By 1971, the company was flying to twenty African countries in addition of the European and American cities.

In 1973 Air Afrique received its first wide-body aircraft, a DC-10, to accommodate the most important routes. At the same time, Caravelles were used on African flights. Cheikh Fall was succeeded by Aoussou Koffi at the head of the company in 1974. In 1979, the company ordered one Airbus A300B4 and two Airbus A310s, the first of them intended to fly the Dakar–Paris route; the order was later homogenised to three A300B4s, with the first airplane entering the fleet in May 1981.

In 1990 Air France became UTA's controlling shareholder. This resulted in UTA's stake in Air Afrique passing into Air France's hands.

In 1994 the fleet comprised 12 aircraft and the carrier had more than 4,200 employees. Cash position dramatically worsened that year after a 50% devaluation of the CFA franc, a situation that led to the seizure of a fourth of the fleet, due to debt defaults, in the forthcoming years. Subsequently, the already indebted company had to lease in order to revert the lack of equipment. It nevertheless suspended, or reduced the frequency on some routes, and codeshared others. DHL started participating into the airline in 1995. Debts rose to about US$300,000,000 ($427,766,435 in 2012) by late 1998. By that time, eleven countries on the CFA zone were the major shareholders of the airline (70.4%), African and French investors had a participation of 13.7%, Air France had a 12.2% stake, and DHL owned 3.2%.

In early 2001, Jeffrey Erickson, former CEO of Trans World Airlines, attempted to re-structure the heavily-indebted carrier, backed by both a consultancy and a World Bank grant, setting up a 14-month privatisation plan. At that time schedules were commonly missed as the airline was suffering a lack of equipment. Later that year, Air Afrique appealed to the French carrier Air France –still a minor shareholder– for negotiation capacity. Air France became the major shareholder of the company when its holding was raised to 35% after a cash injection. The eleven African Governmentes reduced its participation in Air Afrique to 22%, 5% belonged to the employees, and the remaining stake were owned by other investors. The plan Air France had in mind was to close down Air Afrique and set up a new airline using the same name. Following the downturn in the aviation industry after the 11 September 2001 attacks, Air Afrique went out of business and was never revived.