Just weeks after the Gaddafi regime was ousted from Tripoli, several international airlines announced they would resume services to the country as soon as the security situation allowed.
Turkish Airlines and Royal Jordanian (RJ) were two of the first, stating they intended to begin flights first to Benghazi in mid September, followed by Tripoli once the airport reopened.
Air Malta stated they hoped to resume flights in October, while three airlines – Etihad, Qatar and Malev – even announced they would start their first Tripoli routes once all clearances and safety checks were completed. Libyan provisional government officials declared they hoped Tripoli International Airport would reopen in November.
But despite the country now
having been liberated, operating to
Libya remains a challenging undertaking: the NATO no-fly zone which only recently came to an end, damage to airport infrastructure and
ATC facilities, and insurance cover on flights into Libya, which it has been reported, can run into six figures.
So why are some airlines so keen to return so quickly? “I believe Libya has great potential and we will be working with both airports and airlines to get as much operational assistance as possible to resume flights,” Hussein H Dabbas, president and CEO of RJ told Routes News.
“There is plenty of Libya-Jordan traffic, Jordan is a Mecca for Libyans looking for education, for tourism and for medical treatment and if we can we want to help and assist in the future development of the country.
“We had a good relationship with the previous regime, but we are not a political airline, we have nothing to do with that, we just want to operate commercially to the country,” he explains.
RJ is operating within strict guidelines set down by NATO and the National Transitional Council (NTC), explains Dabbas who hopes the carrier can quickly return to the level of services it operated before the uprising.
Another key attraction of the Libyan market is of course its oil industry. The country has the largest reserves in Africa, the ninth largest in the world, while Libya is a key supplier of light sweet crude oil to world markets.
With foreign companies, which
had employed thousands of skilled workers in Libya, keen to resume production, airlines can once again expect to benefit from tapping into
these high-yield markets.
“I think there are two threads here: Firstly, a lot of it is driven by the oil industry; this attracted a lot of European oil industry workers and the margins on those routes was good; whether this happens imminently will depend on how any new political arrangements play out,” says John Strickland of JLS Consultancy.
“Secondly, there is the prospect of reconstruction work, which will no doubt require foreign workers to move back to the country.
“Another key motivator prior to the Arab Spring was that Libya was opening up to moderate tourism developments – there are a number of cultural sights on offer, but this would require a dramatic improvement in the stability of the country.”
Strickland believes airlines are working to get back into Libya quickly because they know from previous experience it was a profit generator.
While the future stability of the country remains uncertain, conditions are far better than those that airlines wishing to return to post-conflict Iraq and Afghanistan faced, says Dr Paul Paflik, vice president at the InterVISTAS Consulting Group.
“The difference seems to be the safety of the airport area and the safety in general. While Baghdad area is more or less a closed military area and to travel to Baghdad city still requires special security measures, it seems that Tripoli Airport and the city are much safer.
“After the war in Iraq it took many months before Austrian Airlines was able to open flights to Erbil in Northern Iraq as the first carrier and only reopened Baghdad this June.
“Due to the relatively short period of the crisis, the connections with companies from the West as well as contracts are still existing, therefore the demand should be back to pre-crisis
levels in a very short time.”
Paflik points out that in mid October the Austrian minister of foreign affairs, together with approximately 35 company CEOs, chartered a special Austrian Airlines flight to visit Libya to hold high-level talks with NTC officials and discuss possible business opportunities.
Other positive signs coming out of Libya include the lifting of sanctions on Libya and Afriqiyah Airways by the EU, the promise to hold elections within eight months and the thawing of overseas Libyan funds.
So what about the current state of Libya’s airport facilities? Prior to the 2011 conflict, the Libyan government had initiated a countrywide expansion and modernisation of its airports.
In 2008, SNC-Lavalin was awarded a contract to build a new 5mppa terminal, new runway and apron in a project valued at C$500 million at Benghazi. The Canadian company says it is monitoring the situation before returning to the project.
Meanwhile, in Tripoli, a tender to build a brand new international airport was awarded as a joint venture to TAV Airports Holding Company, Odebrecht and Athens-based Consolidated Contractors Group (CCC).
The project envisages the construction of two terminal buildings, each totalling 175,000sqm, with
160 check-in counters, 12 baggage handling carousels and 32 fixed and
64 mobile passenger boarding bridges and capable of handling 20mppa.
TAV is also involved in a joint venture with CCC in the expansion of Sabha International Airport, a project which
was due to be completed by 2013, prior to the uprising. “We are optimistic that the current situation will be settled soon and we will resume our works there,”
said Ceyda Akdağ, spokesperson for
TAV Airports.
As Libyans celebrate their liberation, the aviation industry likely to play a crucial role in the country’s reconstruction.
This article features in Routes News 2011 Issue 6
