Dawn finally breaks over troubled CAAB

Mbongeni Mguni | Friday January 15, 2016 14:36

A telling moment in the troubled short life of the Civil Aviation Authority of Botswana (CAAB) came last year when a parliamentary committee slammed the six-year-old entity as an “organisation in the ICU”.  One legislator said it was in a worse state than “non-performing government departments”. From its evolution into a parastatal from a government department in 2009, CAAB - the public entity responsible for regulating, providing and promoting aviation safety and security in Botswana – quickly turned into the bête noir of the parastatal sector. Dogged by challenges around its organisational restructuring, human resource and stagnant revenues, the CAAB also suffered disgruntlement and demotivation among employees, high staff turnover, and overall sub-optimal performance. More was to come and after an adverse audit, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in April 2013 slapped Botswana with two “Significant Safety Concerns” (SSCs) around operations of aircraft and airworthiness of aircraft.The listing effectively placed the local aviation sector on an international blacklist. Botswana was unable to certify airlines who wished to operate local and international flights.

Two airlines, Blue Sky Airway and Daytona Air, were keen to start local and regional flights and had applied for certification. However, any certification from the CAAB would have been internationally hollow as a result of ICAOs SSCs.

“Once ICAO says you are under an SSC, it means you are not capable of providing certificates that are credible to ICAO in terms of aviation safety,” CAAB CEO, Geoffrey Moshabesha explains.

Cutting a calm figure during an interview at his Fairgrounds office this week, the Lesotho-national has 45 years experience in aviation, most of these at senior levels. Moshabesha spent 16 years in various senior regional positions within the ICAO and, in an aviation sector bedevilled by blacklisting, is seen as a ‘messianic’ figure.

“The listing impacted confidence in our air transport sector; it retarded growth,” he says.

“We could not allow new players who had applied for certification, to come in and compete. Competition was stifled during that period.”

An even greater threat in the SSC listing was the potential of a ban by the European Union (EU).

“We were under threat by the EU and once they blacklist you, it’s not easy to get out.

“There are countries that have managed to get out of the SSCs, but are still blacklisted by the EU.

“If the EU had blacklisted us, it would have been a massive setback because most of the people who fly to Maun and Kasane come from Europe and they fly Air Botswana. “When the tourists are hopping within the Delta, they are using operators based in Maun and imagine the impact if the EU had said don’t fly Botswana registered operators.

“That could have spiralled onto the general economy.” For eight days last December, a four-man audit team from ICAO scrutinised Botswana’s progress in addressing the two SSCs as well as other recommended standards and practices. The auditors liked what they saw and early in January, ICAO struck off the safety concerns, scoring Botswana marks that are above the African and global average in terms of effective implementation of ICAO standards and recommended practices.

Moshabesha explains that behind the listing lies years of backbreaking work involving stakeholders across the local aviation sector, who have all had to overhaul their processes and standards to comply and even exceed ICAO requirements.

Botswana adopted a corrective action plan after the 2013 audit, with ICAO providing continuous monitoring every step, meaning all stakeholders had to commit to improvement and uninterrupted feedback to the international body.

The exercise was mammoth, involving the amendment of regulations, developments of procedures, checklists and others. All air operators in the country had to be recertified as well as all aircraft maintenance entities, an exercise involving due diligence assessments of key staff, infrastructure and other capabilities. At least 15 aviation sector entities had to be recertified in total, going through ICAO’s detailed ‘5-Phase’ certification process, with careful recording of all processes for the auditors.

“It was really an overhaul of the whole system and everything had to be supported by checklists,” says Moshabesha. “That’s why it took so long. We also had to keep informing the EU about our progress.” The CAAB has invited Blue Sky and Air Daytona to restart their applications for certification and the two airlines are reportedly keen to kick off their operations.

“They plan to go outside the country, which means they will take up opportunities where Air Botswana has not been able to.

“People will have easier access to the outside world because right now, we have to go through OR Tambo and there are restrictions there as most countries require transit visas.

“It will also help in that people will not have to stay overnight in South Africa.”

The two new airlines are expected to tap into the opportunities provided by Kenya Airways and Ethiopia Airlines, which both have direct routes to Gaborone, eliminating the dependence on OR Tambo.

The lifting of the safety concerns will also allow for the establishment of a second aviation training school in Botswana, further promoting homespun growth of the sector.

The privately-sponsored school has also been waiting in the wings for ICAO’s thumbs up. While he will continue working to ensure even greater adherence to international safety protocols, the lifting of the SSCs will allow Moshabesha to devote more energy to turning around the CAAB in 2016. Cabinet last year approved the organisation’s new five-year Strategic Plan, which is geared at transforming and turning the parastatal around, through targeting areas such as Financial Sustainability and Growth, Leadership and Culture, Governance, Risk and Compliance, Branding and others. The starting point this year will be to tackle the issue of revenue growth, an area studies show was largely to be blame for the troubles the CAAB found itself in after establishment in 2009.

For years, most of the CAAB’s services were provided free of charge, while others were under-charged, running contrary to aspirations of a self-sustaining, efficient and high performance organisation. A belief persisted that if the CAAB revised and restructured its charges, this would turn airlines and passengers away, depressing tourism, trade and the general economy.

Lower aviation activity, in turn, would lead to further losses for the CAAB, as regulators worldwide rely on attracting more users of the country’s airspace and its airports. “For 2016, we are reviewing our revenue collection to ensure that we charge appropriately for the services we provide. As the CAAB, we are not expected to make a profit, but recover the costs of doing business and also ensure that we efficiently collect what’s owed to us.

“We have not been able to sustain ourselves because most of the services, we are providing free of charge and we also did not want to overcharge.

“We are conducting a study to see what’s prevailing in the region so that we can be at par with that. “We want to reduce the subvention from government as much as possible.”

Moshabesha and his team will also spend the year working on other areas of the Strategic Plan, such as the branding initiative, which seeks to distinguish and highlight the CAAB as a ‘changed organisation’ with a recognised place in the industry and the economy. An exciting development for the year will involve the implementation of the Land Use Master Plan under which an Airport City model is planned for the Sir Seretse Khama International Airport with hotels, shopping centres and recreational facilities in the area.

The CAAB envisions leasing out land to the private sector and building a business district supported by the traffic at the SSKIA. Similar Airport City models are planned for the other major airports. It is expected that the initiative will enhance the CAAB’s revenue base, while also promoting aviation as a trigger of economic activity.

After their lean years, Moshabesha and his lieutenants are hoping 2016 becomes the first in which the good times roll.