We
all know the names of large airlines, mainly from the United States and Europe.
However, we hardly ever hear the names of small airlines that only service
local areas. One of these smaller airlines is Air Namibia, and it is on the
path of a failing business.
One
of the major problems with small airlines is that it is often difficult for
them to compete with larger airlines with an established customer base and the
ability to decrease the fare below the cost of the trip in order to outcompete
other airlines. But this is only one of the problems faced by Air Namibia.
Unfortunately,
Air Namibia has been plagued by corruption and embezzlement scandals. On top of
that, there has been a clear lack of competent leadership in the upper echelons
of the company. Because Air Namibia is government-owned, the airline is
particularly susceptible to being used for money laundering or other
corruption/embezzlement schemes. As a result, it has suffered setbacks in terms
of revenue and competitiveness with other airlines.
The
interesting part of this is that, because routes to Windhoek are so high in
price, Air Namibia has real potential to become a successful airline by making prices
competitive and focusing on routes to Windhoek. However, prices have been
consistently too high to draw in adequate interest from customers, and
inappropriate aircrafts have been purchased for the types of flights that Air
Namibia offers.
It
will be interesting to see where this goes. Perhaps in the future, flights to
Namibia will be cheaper (something that we all can understand with our
pocketbooks now).
~Scarlett
No comments:
Post a Comment