The CEO of ASKY, Esayas WoldeMariam Hailu in this interview says Nigeria is a big aviation market with a formidable and challenging Ecosystem.
According to him ASKY has been a profitable Pan-African airline within 13 years with 15 Planes flying to 28 cities, despite the many challenges in the sector.
He also touched on other salient issues concerning the development of the aviation industry in Africa.
Excerpt.
Asky has been around for 10 years or more. Is Asky a profitable airline?
Yes, Asky was established in the year 2010 and now it is 13 years young and Asky is a profitable airline. It is not only profitable in terms of economics, but it is also profitable in terms of fulfilling its vision and mission of connecting West, Central, South, East Africa with each other and connecting people and goods and cultures. So, it is profitable in all dimensions.
How has Asky fulfilled this vision?
First of all, the commercial tagline for Asky is the Pan-African airline. By saying this, we are not just invoking slogans, we mean what we say in Asky. Asky is a real Pan-Africa, number one.
By connecting people from Cape Verde, from the western most to Kenya, Nairobi the eastern most to Niamey, Niger the northern most and Johannesburg, South Africa the southern most. And just about anywhere else in between 28 destinations.
This means west, central, south, east Africa, building one of the largest networks connecting Africa. That means serving the Pan-African initiative, the Continental Free Trade Agreement, and before it is even being fulfilled, the Single African Air Transport Market. So this is one of the Pan-African attributes of Asky, by the sheer network architecture. It shows Pan-Africanism.
Number two, look at Asky’s name. Asky means African Sky. Look at the color of the logo. The golden and the brown. The brown is the brown color of the Africans. The golden is all the minerals and the gold which is in Africa, be it in Ghana, Mali, Niger, and elsewhere.
Number three, Asky is Pan-African because Asky is employing pilots and cabin crew from Senegal to Chad to Ghana to Gabon to Benin to Togo to Niger and from everywhere. Even from Nigeria, from Sokoto to Maiduguri, to Ogun State and to Abia State, all geopolitical zones. In fact, the largest concentration of pilots flying as Asky are from Nigeria.
So this shows you that Asky is Pan-African in terms of its employment opportunities, in terms of its brand, look and feel and logo, in terms of its network. It is living true to its claim. It does not deny its claim of being Pan-African.
How profitable is Asky, at least in West Africa?
You know, Western Central Africa, is a high operating cost medium. So for Asky to make profit, Asky needs to struggle. There are two components for profitability. The top line revenue and the middle line cost and the bottom-line profit. The top line revenue is uncontrollable because it’s exposed to competition. So, competition is external, all players are there. They dump their prices, they do all kinds of things to compete, to take market share. So that is uncontrollable.
Asky is endeavoring to keep profitable because it strictly controls its middle line, the cost. It has a high regiment of cost control. Because of that, it makes profits. And then that helps Asky to plough back part of the profit as an incentive to the travelling public to produce a single unit cost of available seat-kilometre, a single seat on the aircraft to be produced at the minimum cost to be able to sell it. That is how Asky struggles to be profitable.
Is Asky an independent airline, or is Asky beholden as a feeder airline to Ethiopian Airlines?
Well, Asky is an independent airline, it is the son of its own father. As an African airline, it is a private commercial company owned by shareholders. Of course, Ethiopian Airlines is part of the shareholders. But Asky has got its own board, its own network. Asky and Ethiopian Airlines have a very beautiful commercial relationship. They feed each other. They have shares. They have special corporate agreement. And because Ethiopian Airlines is the bigger brand, Asky being associated with Ethiopian Airlines has given Asky a very good commercial dividend. Otherwise, Asky is a company of its own, with its own shareholders, with its own board. So, it’s an independent commercial company.
How has Asky grown in 10 years? How did it start and how has it grown over the last 13 years?
Asky started from a humble beginning. It was operating Bombardier Q400s, which are Turbo props aircraft with ultra narrow body. Now Asky has migrated into jet engine. Asky is operating B737 MAX, B737-800, new generations.
Asky is now having 15 aircraft and 28 destinations. And Asky has diversified its network all the way to East Africa, Kenya, Nairobi. All the way to South Africa, Johannesburg, all the way to the westernmost part Praia Cape Verde, and a big network of 28 destinations. So Asky has grown within the last 13 years. It has outgrown from a humble beginning of a regional operator, and has truly become a pan-African airline.
How does ASKY fulfill this promise of a Pan-African airline when it doesn’t cover the most of Africa?
Well, Asky is now covering many of the sub-Saharan African major markets. But Asky has a plan of widening its network to places where it is not currently going. Asky also has a plan to diversify, crossing the Mediterranean to go to Paris, Madrid and other places.
Nigeria is the major market for Asky, what is the relationship?
Nigeria is the leader for Africa in many context. Number one, it is the largest African population and it is the biggest economy. And it has the largest aviation traffic, the traveling public, highly mobile. A traffic of more than 230 million population, very young population, highly mobile. So, Asky is highly desirous to serve the Nigerian public as it continues to do right now. And Nigerian is a very good host. Number one, the Nigerian customers are patronizing Asky. And Asky is fulfilling its promise to the Nigerian public by serving Abuja and Lagos.
And Asky wishes to cooperate with the local Nigerian operators to have commercial agreements so that they can connect the traffic from all the geopolitical zones of Nigeria and to feed Asky either in Abuja or Lagos, so that the Asky can convey that to the vast network within the continent of Africa. And the Nigerian government, the Nigerian Ministry of Aviation, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, and the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, and the Nigerian Air Space Management Agency, and the Nigerian travel agency community, these are very good partners and regulators to work with, so Asky feels very much at home in Nigeria, as it is an African brand.
You started flights to South Africa, you have started Nairobi. How well have you done in these markets?
Well, these are one of the big spots on the continent of Africa. South Africa, we started last year. Nairobi, it is just beginning of October, so it’s a couple of months. South Africa is doing well in terms of traffic.
The yield in South Africa is very low because of high competition, so we need to work on that. And Nairobi is catching up. It’s a very good market because Nairobi has corporate traffic, leisure traffic. Also, we are bringing tourism into Kenya and we are bringing corporate business from Kenya to the rest of Africa. So, it is doing well.
Where else in Africa do we expect you to turn up?
Well, in the near future would like to expand to Khartoum, Cairo, Casablanca, and Mauritania into such places.
How soon would that be?
When as soon as resources allow. You know having an aircraft now, the global aviation is highly recovering from the COVID pandemic depression. Now, the cost of ownership for an aircraft is very formidable. As soon as we have enough resources, we would like to diversify, to widen our network to those places.
You talked about crossing the Mediterranean. What is your vision for Europe?
Well, Europe, you know, the Francophone Africa, everybody’s dream is to travel to Paris. So, Paris is one of the natural destinations that Asky would like to serve. And also Spain, Madrid, and Lisbon, Portugal. These are some of the spots that we are targeting.
Any vision for America?
Right now, America is a big leap. It requires a big wide-body aircraft because it’s more than six hours to seven, eight and nine hours to the east coast of the United States. So it requires wide-body aircraft and having wide-body aircraft is also very expensive.
Right now, we are serving the US route 7 times a week to Newark and 3 times a week to Washington DC in collaboration with Ethiopian Airlines. Asky is putting its commercial hub on Ethiopian Airlines operated flight. So Asky flight can be sold to America right now in cooperation with the culture of Ethiopian Airlines. But in the future, that is also one of our targets.
In aviation, you are seen as one of the Nigerian specialists. How do you describe the Nigerian aviation environment in your own view as an observer?
It is a very big aviation market by the share, by the mobility, the people are very much travellers in Nigeria. In Nigeria it is good to have a well-functioning domestic and international Nigerian companies. But the aviation ecosystem in Nigeria, the way I look at it, it is a little bit formidable and difficult for the Nigerian authorities.
So my advice and my appeal for the Nigerian lawmakers is that they need to enable the operators in Nigeria to be able to thrive. Because the market is so big for the international and domestic operators. There is no shortage of market but the government should enable the Nigerian operators by way of good regulation that would create the enabling environment, by way of making them to thrive.
Making the law, so that they can help them develop the aviation infrastructure, making the law to be very conducive for the local operators, so that they can grow up to the task and cover the region and the continent. So this is my appeal. Otherwise, there are a lot of people who are really interested to make aviation to work in Nigeria. And also the market is so in demand and saturated and there are a lot of operators in the sector.
So my appeal to the Nigerian government is to enable them and push them to grow. That is my simple advice. Of course the whole aviation ecosystem needs to be built to be an enabling environment for aviation.
What is your high point as CEO of Asky?
Well, the singular high point I have in mind is Africa needs aviation proficiency. People talk about brian drain from Africa to the developed world, but when it comes to aviation, Africa does not have the trained aviation expertise to drain. So, Africa needs to train a lot of aviation experts. This is a highly skilled intensive industry which requires license, modulated license and other things. So, the high point is Asky should be bent on developing aviation in the region by way of training aviation professionals.
This needs to be done in every country in Africa to train aviation professionals. The more aviation professionals we have, we can help aviation to grow in the continent.
You were formerly a manager for E.T. in Nigeria. You went back, you rose all the way to M.D. International Services for E.T. How do we describe Essayas who is the CEO of Asky? How do we describe your aviation experience?
Aviation is a very interesting industry. As far as I am concerned, right from the young age, graduating from the university 33 years ago, I joined European Airlines. And my career has been in Ethiopian Airlines, working in different places, both at home base and overseas. As you mentioned, the managing director of international services, the chief commercial officer, that was for 32 years.
In the 33rd year, now being at the helm of Asky, so 33 years of aviation experience has made me to really specialize in one industry. So this is quite a rewarding experience to see the African aviation grow from the humble beginning to where it is now. And African airline operators coming to the global arena. Look at Ethiopian airlines. So it is a fulfilling experience. It’s a rewarding experience that I had in aviation.
What is your vision for Asky?
Asky has a very big potential as a pan-African airline. It is already connecting many African places, but it wants to widen and deepen in Africa and to link Africa to the rest of the world, especially to Europe and across the Atlantic, to Latin America and North America as well.
And also diversifying to the Middle East and even to Asia. So Asky has a promising potential to do all this. So the vision for Asky is to grow from an airline into a complete aviator, having its own maintenance facilities, training facilities, and all other things in the aviation value chain. So Asky needs to diversify into being a complete aviator. That is my vision for Asky.
Do you see Asky overtaking Ethiopian Airlines as the biggest airline in Africa?
Well, Ethiopian Airlines has been a mentor. Ethiopian has set out on a vision to help African airlines to come up to the task, up to the role, so that the majority of Africa’s traffic being uplifted by non-African airlines, to belong to the African airlines.
The Ethiopian is a big mentor. So, if at all, Asky overtakes Ethiopian Airlines, it will be a big CV for Ethiopian Airlines as a good mentor to have brought African Airlines up to that level. So whatever time is going to be, time will tell us. So we just have to wait and see what time is going to reveal.
In one sentence, how do you describe the future of Asky?
Well, Asky as a Pan-African airline is a jewel in the African aviation. It has a very, very big potential, so we are very much sure that Asky is definitely going to dominate the African skies to carpet the whole continent with its wings. So that is how I would describe the future of Asky.
