Air Afrique saved but: A bail out plan by Air France has made it the major player in the successor to the troubled Air Afrique. (NA Market).

The 11 West African countries that collectively own 68.44% of Air Afrique have accepted a bail out plan that will see them reducing their stake to between 22 and 28%. The plan was engineered by the Group Air France.

Although the decision, quite revolutionary in nature, had been expected for months, that it was accepted at all at a crisis meeting in Brazzaville in late August, came as a surprise to many of the major actors in the affair, not least the 4,200 employees of the troubled airline.

According to the plan, a final version of which is expected to be ready as early as November, the 11 countries -- Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Central African Republic, Cote d'Ivoire, Togo, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal -- will now collectively own between 22 and 28% of the airline, thereby allowing Group Air France to increase its holding from 11.84 to 35% and effectively becoming the main operator of the airline.

Moreover, Air Afrique in its present legal form will cease to exist. It will be replaced by a wholly new airline to be called the Nouvelle Compagnie Air Afrique (NCAA) which will pay royalties to the former airline for the right to use its existing routes. The rights to the routes will be granted for a five-year period to the new airline by the African nations that currently own the routes.

In effect, the new airline will become the national carrier of all the 11 member countries who will accord the airline priority for the operation of the existing routes and new ones yet to be developed.

The role to be played by Air France in the new airline is to be determined in the coming weeks, although already the precise nature of the collaboration is at the centre of a controversy.

It all started when the Senegalese president, Abdoulaye Wade, who had just returned from Paris where he thought he had negotiated an accord with Air France and the French government (which controls 51% of Air France), declared that the French airline would not only keep the present 4,200 Air Afrique workforce, but also hire 500 more.

President Wade also announced that he had been made to understand that Air France would immediately inject CFA5O billion worth of fresh capital into the new company, this to help alleviate the financial burden on Air Afrique whose debt is estimated to be over CFA300 billion.

Air France immediately contradicted Wade. "Absolutely not," said the airline's vice president for financial affairs, Philippe Calavia. "How dare they think we will hire another 500 employees when already they have 2,000 employees too many?", Calavia asked.

He said Air Afrique was the only airline he knew of "where you need 4,200 employees to operate all of six aircraft!"

As for the bailout, he hinted that Air France had never taken any stand on it.

"There are many steps to be taken which we will have to do one at a time," he explained.

Among the pressing issues to be ironed out, he noted, were a new flight plan, the size of the new carriers fleet, the setting up of a viable industrial programme and a legal framework under which it will operate.

"Let it be known," he said, "that Air France will not become involved in the new company at any price," and that "before we decide to become mote involved, we will have to be assured of the support of all the actors concerned" -- which include Air Afrique's employees and their militant trade unions which are blamed for much of the airline's current sorry plight.