In July 2020, the Ivorian government, which owns 58% of the national flag carrier, gave 14bn CFA francs ($25.7m) to Air Côte d’Ivoire to help it cope with the Covid-19 crisis.
In Dakar, the government allocated €68m ($81.9m) to national airline Air Sénégal, which is 100% state-owned.
However, Lomé, where Asky is based, did n0t provide the “pan-African company” with any money. As it is a privately owned company, Asky is left to its own devices in times of crisis.
However, it has sought help from the World Bank, African Development Bank (AfDB) and several banks. “We knocked on all the doors, undertook all possible and imaginable steps, but we haven’t yet found a solution,” says Nowel Ngala, the company’s commercial director.
Five months of quiet
However, Asky has indeed – like its colleagues on the continent – been hit by the health crisis, which has severely impacted the entire global airline industry. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), although African companies have demonstrated the greatest resilience in the world, their revenue per passenger-kilometre fell by 63.9% between January 2019 and January 2021.
The African Airlines Association (AFRAA) estimates that the continent lost $10bn over the course of 2020.
As for Asky, after almost no activity between March and August 2020 – during which only charter operations for the UN in West Africa took place, which involved mobilising three aircraft from Accra as well as cargo flights to bring Covid support equipment to West Africa – the company has recorded a timid recovery, operating at 27% capacity in September and October.
An “ongoing” request to shareholders
“We also had to adapt to the anti-Covid protocols put in place by various countries, review our flight plans according to the curfews introduced, reduce our number of flights to certain countries in order to respect their guidelines, such as Cameroon, Gabon and Nigeria… It wasn’t easy,” says Asky’s Ngala, who recently announced that activity fell by 48% from 2019’s levels.
