5 minute read
Face to Face - CEO of Air Austral
FACE TO FACE
Despite its name sounding Australian, Air Austral is the national airline of Réunion Island. Based at the Roland Garros Airport in the French overseas department of Réunion, it operates scheduled services from Réunion to France, South Africa, Thailand, India and a number of destinations in the Indian Ocean.
Air Austral CEO Marie-Joseph Male.
This niche carrier surprised many when it ordered two new Airbus A380s, which many considered an over-reach. And indeed it was. In April 2012, founder and CEO Gérard Ethève was replaced by Marie-Joseph Malé following the financial difficulties caused by the consequences of unwise business decisions compounded by high fuel prices. The A380s were cancelled and the Boeing 777 fleet reduced. Ironically, the airline also operates Boeing 787s and the Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engine grounding resulted in its wet leasing an A380 in 2018.
GUY LEITCH CAUGHT UP with MarieJoseph Malé at the AASA conference which he hosted in Reunion. MJM: Yes, we codeshare with Kenyan and with Air France and are looking to expand our codeshares.
GL: Are you part of any Alliance?
GL: Given the importance of Reunion as a tourist destination and as a part of France, how big is the contribution your airline makes to the Reunion economy? MJM: We are part of a small Alliance called the Vanilla Alliance. This includes Air Seychelles and Air Mauritius and Madagascar and ourselves, but we are not part of any of the big three alliances.
MJM: We are the third largest private employee in Reunion and we make tourism happen in partnership with the other airlines such as Air France. But we are the only ones based in Reunion, so our contribution is absolutely critical.
GL: The question is often asked: What’s stopping African airlines: Can you outline the limitations Air Austral faces? GL: Your route structure has to feed from Paris because you can’t really feed it from the Reunion side?
MJM: We also feed from the Reunion side. We have the best network in the Indian Ocean. We fly to eight points in Madagascar and the Comoros Islands. We have three or four flights a day to Mauritius. We fly to the Seychelles and to Mayotte and Rodrigues. So we MJM: One of the challenges we face is the fully have a good network in the Indian Ocean. liberalised air travel context in Europe. This means that we have five competitors All French GL: As a French carrier do you find government just on the Reunion – Paris route. It is uncommon to see carriers have bureaucracy difficult to overcome? that much competition on a single route. high costs MJM: In the early days we found it difficult, but as a The other challenge we face French airline we have the is costs. All French carriers have high costs in terms of benefits of France behind us. We have the full European the social and fiscal costs. For example, when you look power in our negotiations. at the salaries and the other costs in Mauritius, they are GL: Who owns Air Austral? just 8% of the salaries we are paying to the government in France. In general, we have another 50% costs, MJM: Air Austral is 98% owned by a Society of which makes a huge difference. which the local government is a majority. It’s not exactly government-owned but it was privately owned GL: Where do you usually fly to in Africa and what to 2008 and now a minority shareholder in the form of are your post Covid expansion plans? our local government came up with the money to save MJM: We currently fly to Johannesburg and to the airline. Mayotte. We are looking at expanding into Nairobi. GL: Do you have a good working relationship with GL: Do you codeshare with other airlines – for your shareholder or do they from time to time try instance Kenyan? and dictate how you should operate?
An Air Austral Boeing 777-300 suits the high capacity tourist market.
MJM: We have an excellent relationship with our shareholder. GL: Are you looking at Nairobi because you need a better hub?
GL: What are your expansion plans? Are you looking to obtain Fourth, Fifth and higher freedom rights across Africa and elsewhere? MJM: Yes we would like to see a west African hub develop.
MJM: Yes, what we are achieving is to develop a regional network. We want to in fact increase frequencies to Johannesburg – [pre Covid] we had three frequencies per week. At the same time we are trying to develop more incoming traffic from South Africa, but that takes time. We are looking at developing ecotourism.
We will be discussing with South Africa the possibilities of codeshare beyond South Africa. For me Southern Africa is something that we must expand into. And we hope that Kenya will be a good partner for us.
GL: What about your plans for expanding further east? Can you compete against the Gulf-3? we would MJM: As far as the east is like to see a west African concerned, we will be starting operations with our partner Air Mayotte, direct to places hub develop like Guangzhou. It would be convenient if we could build our expansion plans to the east route through a hub in Nairobi. We will be quite prudent in our route development and if we can go via a hub like Nairobi and share the route, it will be an all-round advantage. GL: What about your fleet expansion plans?
Litson Ad - Half Page.pdf 2 2019/03/04 15:35 MJM: I think that for the time being we are okay.
