The tragedy at Uganda Airlines

Why the problem at our national career is not one of new business trying to find its way but of grossly incompetent management

THE LAST WORD | ANDREW M. MWENDA | As the new year begins during the last two weeks of a presidential election, I feel it is necessary to ignore politics for a moment and focus on the tragedy unfolding before our eyes at Uganda Airlines. When the airline was initially formed, I predicted that it would lead our country to a lot of political contestations resulting in tears. However, six years later, the tears I had predicted have come from an angle I had not seen or anticipated, i.e., that the top management of the airline would not just be grossly incompetent but also would systematically loot the baby handed them by the state.

The management at Uganda Airlines claims that there are powerful people out to get them out of the airline. It is possible these forces exist with such an aim. But this does not necessarily mean that passenger anger over their incompetence is created by these powerful forces. The airline is caught in a rapid downward spiral that, if management is not removed within a few days or weeks, may leave nothing to salvage. Every day the president delays making this important decision makes the possibility of recovery more difficult, and it will soon be extremely difficult to reverse the damage.

In this column, I will withhold my accusations of corruption and deal with those of incompetence. Let me begin with basic things courtesy of the customers. Many flights have been delayed, some for two or three days. Let me even assume that such delays are necessitated by factors beyond the control of management. Customers have been complaining largely about the lack of basic communication when such delays happen: a telephone call or a text message or email. A lot of these delays can be anticipated many hours (up to nine hours) in advance, therefore giving the airline ample time to inform customers. Instead, customers have been going to the airport only to be told the flight was cancelled or delayed.

Again, I am willing to accept that a new airline would lack the competence to do many things at the beginning. However, the issue of flight delays and cancellations has become so regular that even the most incompetent management would have put in place measures to ensure efficient and timely communication to customers. The failure to address this simple problem is not just one of managerial incompetence but of a particular disregard for customers. There is a sense of impunity among some of the top managers at the airline, the feeling that they are untouchable and can therefore disregard customer cries.

I could catalogue the number of flight delays and cancellations here when Uganda Airlines has been unable to notify customers. But they would only clutter the article and delay the argument I want to make. Why has management, including the board, not intervened to do this one thing: communication? While management is claiming and alleging that some powerful people want to remove them from their positions, the actual cries and riots are coming from frustrated customers. Indeed, Ugandans, including myself, had embraced this airline, many of them opting to fly it. To disregard their frustrations and cook up excuses of external forces is absurd.

This brings me to the core issue of gross managerial incompetence. The biggest cause of the current crisis of flight delays and cancellations is that management opened many routes with very few planes. Let me deal with long flights that need a wide-body plane. We have only two planes, the Airbus A330. Uganda Airlines has five flights to Dubai per week, each flight with 15 hours for a round trip; four flights to London per week, with each round flight taking 21 hours; three flights to Mumbai per week, each with 17 hours for a round trip; and two flights to Lagos and Abuja with 14 hours for a round trip. Those are 238 hours per week with only two planes.

Consequently, in just one week, last week, the flight to Lagos and Abuja was delayed by three days, the one to South Africa by two days, and the other to Dubai by 26 hours. This is historic in the airline business since flight delays by Uganda Airlines are now measured in days, not hours. This is because we have two wide-body planes flying four routes with a high frequency. If one plane gets a problem, it causes a cascade of flight delays and cancellations, creating chaos on all routes. Who approved all these routes and their frequency? Here both management and the board are to blame.

Let us accept that this was an oversight resulting from overambitious management trying to touch the sky. This can be excused because it does not make sense to punish ambition. But recently one of the two Airbus A330s got a mechanical fault and was stuck in Lagos for weeks. Let me ignore the technical details that reflect poor management planning but which one can excuse as a result of a new company trying to find its proper footing. But once one plane was stuck, it was important to suspend most of the flights on these long routes and inform customers accordingly. It does not make sense to try to continue flights on those routes on one plane.

Some people may say Uganda Airlines has a wide-body plane on a wet lease from Denmark for $1m per month. But that plane is not being used because the Danish company has not yet provided the requisite paperwork. So, the plane is parked. Besides, it is basic knowledge that leases work for airlines with a large customer base. Once you lease it at such a high cost, you must have passengers. But Uganda Airlines has few passengers. It is true that the airline had been growing its passenger base, and its revenues have expanded well because of these new routes. But even this short-term achievement has come at the price of killing customer confidence, which is a long-term strategic asset of any airline. In any case, matters are not helped when customers complain bitterly and no action is taken. Now people believe the president doesn’t care about the fate of their airline and its customers. Once airline operations are politicised, it will become ever more difficult to build customer and public confidence in them. The obituary of Uganda Airlines is being written.

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amwenda@ugindependent.co.ug