Al Baker and Majali warn about industry complacency

Akbar al Baker of Qatar Airways, Samer Majali of Gulf Air, Dr Sani Sener of Turkey’s TAV Airports and Munich Airport president and CEO Dr Michael Kerkloh sat on a no-holds-barred Q&A session by Arabian Aerospace editor Alan Peaford at the centrepoint of today’s Doha Aviation Summit.

Al Baker said that there would still be casualties. “This latest financial situation will still find out some badly run airlines,” he said. “There will be more collapses.”

There were also concerns expressed about the industry’s stance on the environment. “We are not the major polluters but we have not done a good enough job of telling people what we are doing. The aviation industry as a whole is only responsible for 2% of the CO2 emissions and we are improving that with new technology on new aircraft – but there is more that Governments should be doing to improve issues like air traffic management,” Majali said.

The two airline chiefs jointly called on their respective Civil Aviation directorates to become proactive in getting a single-skies project underway in the Gulf.

“If you look we have Doha, Abu Dhabi and Dubai as major international hubs within 45 minutes of each other, as the traffic grows it will become more difficult to manage,” Al Baker said.

With additional flights to Bahrain, Sharjah and the introduction of Dubai World Central the workload for indiviudual national controllers will increase and with it the risk of non-coordinated approaches.

“We need something like Eurocontrol for the Middle East,” Majali said.

The two also called for greater liberalisation.

Earlier at the conference the director general of Singapore’s CAA Yap Ong Heng said that liberalisation of routes such as Singapore to KL had led to more than a 50% increase in flights in a single month.

“There should be less protectionism and more emphasis on market opportunities,” Majali said. “The same goes for ownership. It shouldn’t matter who owns an airline or where they come from. It should be about where that aircraft is registered that counts.”

Dr Sener and Dr Kerkloh praised the Arab countries for their investment in airport infrastructure.  “It can take 25 years for a runway to be built in Europe,” Sener said. “The figures from Boeing and Airbus look at a doubling of the number of aircraft in the next 15 years – but where are they going to land? The Middle East airports will be the region capable of handling the growth.”

While Qatar Airways had enjoyed success with the first commercial flight of a natural gas powered A340, Al Baker warned that the industry needed to be careful about what it promises.

“We are progressing but we talk about targets and maybe as an industry we promise too much.”

The three-day conference at the W-Hotel, Doha is organised by Naseba and continues until Tuesday.