Uganda Airlines: Outsourced management is winning formula

‘A bitter-sweet experience…’, is how mzee Mashurubu reacts to the current ‘storm’ brewing inside Uganda Airlines, our revived national carrier.

In his analysis, the airline was revived at the right time and the wrong time at the same time! The right time because with Ugandan agriculture moving towards the commercial angle, albeit at a zigzag snail pace, no better a strategy than a national carrier for the export of our fresh produce to the global market.

This in light of our neighbours, whose airlines were prioritising their home-grown exports in allocating cargo space and schedule, with Ugandan ones coming in as a by-the-way, at exorbitant rates.

Actually, Ugandan export cargo was subsidising the export cargo of the neighbouring airlines: the discount offered to their home farmers would be recouped from the higher charges on Ugandan exports.  

The wrong time: because our economy, with its high rate of formal employment, is besieged with cronyism and related vices when it comes to employment…more so in such ‘prestigious’ organisations as Uganda Airlines.

The winning formula, argues mzee Mashurubu, is outsourcing the management of Uganda Airlines to a professional management team.

 Team and not company or consulting firm. Team of experts drawn from different countries hired as individuals but contracted severally, ( including Uganda: we still have the golden era parastatal leaders),  all recruited by an independent reputable corporate governance firm.

Notable key positions is team leader, who plays chief executive officer, commercial  director, technical director, director of finance and director of human resource.

With no board and  reporting directly to the Minister of Works and Transport with a dotted line to the head of State, the team will be above local political  fray and influence, with a mandate to grow the airline to profitability  within five years.

Drawing from the example of Kenya Airways, mzee holds that the presence of KLM top management plus other directors recruited from outside the airline and the industry accounted for the turn-around of  Kenya Airways from a limping parastatal to a respectable industry player.
The problems that befell the airline after the initial team left, have been attributed to ‘external influence’ in the formation of the successor management that led to  the veering off, which is being rectified.

Cardinal among the key result areas of the expert team at Uganda Airlines  will be growing a profitable portfolio of cargo transport to regional and continental markets. Kinshasa in DR Congo only needs medium range cargo hauliers and Uganda will not even produce enough to meet the demand, particularly meat, and dairy products.

Equally lucrative is relief food and other materials transportation to refugee camps and settlements   (having failed to stop the generating of refugees, at least let us pick spoils from the dark scar); and with East African airspace soon becoming domestic, another cash-cow is this budget airline of the Ryan Air class. Air travel regionally remains costly because the air ticket component that goes into ‘local’ charges is so high, since regional flights are still treated as international flights, not domestic.

And to stem the financing challenges, besides statutory allocations, mzee  adds that tourist arrival fees at Entebbe International Airport should have 50 per cent ($ 25) go directly into the Uganda Airlines operation overheads budget. With tourism picking, this will cushion the airline against financial shocks as it moves towards break-even and profitability.

At the end of its term, the expert team will have groomed a domestic leadership and management corps, from CFO to janitor that will take The Flying Crane to even greater heights.

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