Tanzania Aviation Industry: The Importance of Safety Standards by Coastal Aviation

Interview with Shafiul Syed, Managing Director and Accountable Manager of Coastal Aviation

What are the current challenges that you face?

At the moment, unfortunately, Corona is the problem. It is such a big elephant in the room and it will dictate the pace of the return of international travel for the next two to three years. We are seeing a lot of countries starting to get vaccinations, but that does not necessarily mean that the gates are open. It all depends on countries that are receiving tourists and their vaccination program as well. One cannot happen without the other. This whole vaccination program is so new to us all. But, how long is it valid for? Is it like the flu jab, where you get it every year? There are then all the issues around all the different mutations and variations that are appearing. So, the virus will keep us busy, but we too need to follow it at least if not lead it.

What are the challenges that are more internal that prevent you from boosting the company?

Since our difficult year in 2017, we have actually taken it upon ourselves to upgrade our entire safety program. Previous to 2017 Coastal Aviation versus what you see now are almost chalk and cheese. To start with, we now have two crew up front. So, it is not just two pilots, it is what we call MCC, which is multi crew coordination. If you put two pilots in there, just two pilots, one is watching the other, etc. But what we have is what you are used to with Emirates, KLM, Air France, British Airways, or any of those carriers. It is two pilots that are working together with checklists, continually looking out for the safety of the aircraft. That is what you will see visibly, but actually, internally there is a huge impact on safety. Even a marketing role has KPIs that are safety related. That is the kind of culture that we have created. The concept is that you can walk off an A380, or a 777, or a brand new Dreamliner, and you will get the same level of safety that you got on the other aircraft. It might be a smaller aircraft, but you will have that level of confidence in the flying. That was a challenge for us. We did lose some business through that process and we have reestablished our revenue stream. But actually, going forward now, one of the challenges apart from Corona is the pace that we have in this environment. There is a lot of competition. Whilst we have spent time on the safety aspects, not everybody appreciates that. Quite a lot of travelers are looking for saving that last buck. Now with all the safety that we have done, obviously that has a little bit of a premium attached to it. Having two well trained pilots up front is naturally more expensive than having one pilot. There are some inherent costs involved in moving and operating at that higher level, but fundamentally, a lot of the market is looking for the savings of the last buck. Often, it is actually the mediator, the middle party like the agent, who is chasing the best commission he can get and often, we do not get to pitch to the ultimate traveler. Those are some of the complexities that are difficult to navigate for us. Typically, we are carrying a quarter of a million customers in good years, but our ability to connect with those customers is pretty difficult. So, we have to rely on the agents and the intermediaries that are selling us. We do our best to promote the safety, but ultimately, both ends of those customers might be chasing the cheapest fare.

Why is it difficult to communicate with your end users, your customers? Do you deal with them directly, online, or some other way?

Generally, it is such a diverse community. We have social media, but if you are not following us you may not get the messages. Through our distribution model, we have about 80% of our customers coming through travel agents. The dynamics of that is that through the travel agents, we can reach some end user based in Las Vegas or San Francisco where we could not actually reach as Coastal Aviation.

What is your scope of business and your competitive advantages?

Coastal deals with international travelers arriving at a gateway, we connect those travelers into safari destinations into the bush, and then from there, we take them to the beach. That effectively is the business model. A big competitive advantage for Coastal Aviation is actually the focus that we have on safety and our customer service.

What is your assessment of the airline industry and the tourism sector in Tanzania?

The sector has been highlighted, especially now, within the pandemic environment. There are two types of aviation operators in this field. First is the international operator who is bringing in traffic to the country. The second is the domestic operator who is dispersing that traffic to the locations. It is a symbiotic relationship. Typically, for us in Coastal Aviation, around a quarter of all the traffic coming into Tanzania is flying on domestically. What it enables us to do is open up some great locations in Tanzania. So, it really is connecting international travelers and adventurers to the very heartland and the very deepest portions of the bush scenario here in Tanzania. In years gone by, National Geographic did a lot of work on the Serengeti and now that has become a really popular destination. So, that is quite developed but if I now look down in the south, the Ruaha National Park is one of the biggest parks in the world, untouched, unblemished a real fantastic experience. With tourists coming in, Coastal Aviation is able to connect an otherwise very remote location to the discerning adventurer to have a great, unique experience.

How many planes do you operate?

The awards that we are most proud of are the TANAPA Awards. TANAPA is the Tanzania and National Parks Association. They are the authority that manage all the parks in Tanzania. We have won that consecutively two years in a row.

In 2019, we had around 30 aircraft. We generally have two types of aircraft. The mainstay of our fleet is the Cessna 208 Caravan which is a great, rugged aircraft designed for this kind of operation. For charter operations, we have the Pilatus PC-12 which is a pressurized aircraft that flies faster, has less seats, but is still able to connect some of the rugged bush. Recently, we have gone through a process of downsizing as the market has dropped off, but we are looking in the next two to three years to get back to that level. Safety is also a big competitive advantage. We have focused on a lot of areas. Visibly, when you travel with Coastal, on every single flight, you will see two crew up front; not just two human bodies at the front, but two pilots that are trained to operate as professional pilots together in the front of the aircraft. It is like flying with Emirates or Air France where you have two crew up front that are working together throughout the flight to promote safety. We spent so much effort putting that in place, training 90 pilots over a period of 14 months to get them to that level. Hopefully that will convince our customer base that we take safety really seriously. We are one of only two operators in this category of operation that has our own maintenance facility which is paramount. Over this last period of time where we have had a lot of aircraft that have been grounded, Coastal Travels has continued to maintain those aircraft. Whereas other carriers are perhaps sending them to Nairobi or other parts of the world, you cannot have the propensity of maintenance that we have undertaken. While the aircraft are grounded, we turn the engines every single week, we turn the tires, we inspect the aircraft very regularly. On the big carriers, you expect that. But there is a whole effort to change the safety culture, whether you are in an operational role or whether you are in a finance or back end role, everybody has a safety KPI at Coastal Travels. We really did try and change that model. But, to be perfectly frank, all of that you may not see. At this point in time, we are a few weeks away from obtaining an international accreditation for our safety standards. We go for audit within the next three weeks and within a further three months, we are expecting to secure new accreditation that everybody around the world will readily recognize and that will give comfort to the customers that we have. We have also worked on customer service. We are in this COVID environment. A lot of international travelers want to know that we have followed our COVID policies, which is difficult sometimes in this particular environment. Our policies are that all our travelers and our crew wear masks. We sanitize the aircraft every night. We wipe all the surfaces after every flight. That is another level of comfort within this current pandemic environment. We have invested in our website recently. We also have our go green initiatives where you can offset your own carbon emissions. Hopefully, you should have the experience of a lifetime when you travel with Coastal.

What new improvements have happened in tourism infrastructure in Tanzania?

There has been some great progress, actually. We now have radar in Tanzania. From Kilimanjaro to Dar es Salaam, we have some great radar coverage. You can go on Flight Radar 24 and track aircraft in Tanzania now. It is much more global than that. Terminal 3 was commissioned, built, and opened year before last. It is a world class terminal. We are through all the teething problems. It is a great experience. The lounges are good, the process is good, it is a clean environment. There is some great WiFi there that you can use to send your last minute selfies all around the world. It is a great terminal. Tanzanians continue to invest in the infrastructure. For us, we operate into the Serengeti. Whilst the Serengeti is renowned for its safari, we need infrastructure to be working very well there. So, we have a committee called the Serengeti Operators Safety Committee. The authorities sit with us and we are able to sort out problems in a dynamic nature. So, whether a wind sock needs replacement, or the airstrip needs to be releveled, or whether there was a flooding problem, all those issues can get raised at that venue and the authorities have been amazingly good. Within days, if not weeks, issues are solved. One example is in the Serengeti, you cannot get mobile phone network coverage everywhere. When we landed at a particular airstrip, travelers obviously had some problems, but we as an operator had huge problems being able to connect with our aircraft. We raised this up with the committee and the woman responsible for airstrips in Tinapa, within a few weeks, had put up a WiFi connection ready to give us access to communication, which is incredible. The dynamic nature of that relationship is really impressive.

Can you describe the nature of how climate change and new green initiatives have changed business for you at Coastal Aviation?

At Coastal, we believe very passionately in that. It is easy to judge the aviation industry that our aircraft consume fuel and we create more of the problem. It would be easy to sit back and say the technology does not exist at the moment. But we did not accept that. We believe that we have a duty to play and if we do not start somewhere, it will never happen. Ultimately, the fuel on our aircraft needs to change and Textron in the guise of Cessna are working on battery powered aircraft, battery powered Caravans, etc. So, there will be a solution for that. But, the technology needs to evolve. For now, though, we did not accept that we cannot do anything. We introduced the carbon offset scheme where we started to look at ourselves, we looked at our own carbon footprint, and we actually give all of our travelers plastic water bottles. We then allowed the bigger water dispensers at our main bases and we said we are not going to issue free water on board, please do feel free to tank up and replenish your own bottles from our supplies. We cut back our water bottle consumption by three quarters, a 75% reduction. There is obviously a health risk here so we do carry water onboard. Sometimes in Tanzania, you can be at 35 or 40 degrees centigrade so we do need to keep water onboard and those are available for our travelers. But we wanted to encourage a behavioral change amongst our passengers and that seemed to have gone down really well. With the water bottles that we generate, those are recycled with an amazing initiative up in Arusha where those water bottles are then regenerated into furniture that people in Arusha and local communities can use which is an amazing story. When you look at aviation, we have some fantastic materials that we use. We are regular users of tires. We looked at all of our specialist metals, the waste that we create from our maintenance, tires, etc., and we have worked with recycling agents that can dispose of that much better. Often, it is regenerated into different things, sometimes into CSR type initiatives, like the furniture. In one case, they can build bricks out of those recycled materials for housing, and in other cases, it is just recycled and converted back into the supply system again. It is the beginning of a journey, not the end. We would love to do more, but we need a bit more of the technology to develop to allow us to do more of that.

What are some recognitions and awards that you have achieved?

Unfortunately, a lot of awards are based on voting, and in some cases, you can use machines to do that. The awards that we are most proud of are the TANAPA Awards. TANAPA is the Tanzania and National Parks Association. They are the authority that manage all the parks in Tanzania. We have won that consecutively two years in a row and that is not by getting people to fill out Facebook voting or any of that. This is awarded by the authorities on what we have done. It is assessed on a set of criteria. We are very proud of the team that have helped deliver that consistently again and again. That relationship has been very, very positive. The regulator complains about Coastal as in, we are the people that report the most. I am quite proud of that accolade as well. Because we take safety at such a high standard, we are not afraid to report the issues. A lot of people may hide issues, but we put it out there because only when you report it do you have a chance of improving it. That is our whole mantra.

With COVID, there is a struggle to decrease your costs and with competition out there. What is your strategy going forward for Coastal to still stay on top?

Looking back to when the whole pandemic situation evolved, we were not actually sure where that would take us. So very quickly, we had to do two things. One is that we had to bring down our cash burn in order to safeguard our survival. The second thing was to raise liquidity. For any airline around the world, those would be the two mantras that they had. We did a great process working with our staff, working with our suppliers to bring down our cost base. We grounded a lot of our fleet. But we did everything in a very interesting way. Of our fleet, we worked with the insurance companies and the providers that we could rotate the fleet. So, we did not actually ground any one particular aircraft. We moved the aircraft around every week so we could keep them flying. Pilots and aircraft are only good when they are flying. Other than that, they are a drain on your resources. Evolving through that situation has been difficult. Because of the reduced business, it was a bit of a guerrilla war out there. People trashed the rates. A lot of the large operators and the hoteliers bought the rates down to below cost, in fact, and the same thing happened in aviation as well. So, there you are trying to generate revenue, but you also need to keep your head above water. That has been a challenge. But we seem to have found a way of operating. We had a reasonable Christmas period and we had a lot of Eastern Europeans that came to Zanzibar. Zanzibar is a beautiful place but it is nice to have a bit of variation. So, once these guys came into Zanzibar, the agents have managed to excite them to go and do day trips on safari. We have a great product that we are selling now which is a scenic flight around Kilimanjaro. We are the only supplier that can do that in a proper way. You cannot do that in the Caravan. You are flying amongst the clouds and you are very close to the summit, in fact, so there is a little bit of risk there. We have the Pilatus PC-12 which flies at 22,000 feet. The views that you can get flying in the Pilatus are incredible. Looking down into the mountain, you can sometimes see the cloud base if you fly early morning. It is a truly inspiring vision. If you look at that terrain around there, there is obviously Mount Kilimanjaro, and another eight minutes flying west you end up at Mount Maru looking down into Arusha. It is a magnificent view. In summary, navigation through this period is going to be difficult, obviously, but if we keep on the track, at some point business will bounce back. The rest of the world is in lockdown and tucked away at home, but that is a level of frustration that is waiting to burst out and come out and visit some of the most amazing places in the world. For us, Tanzania is not a masses experience. When you go on safari, generally it is you and your vehicle and you are sat there in the middle of the great Serengeti or Selous or Ruaha surrounded by God’s wonderful nature. It is not like you are in Disneyland or looking at the Eiffel Tower where everybody is in one place. We have huge space and you can feel very protected within that. The thing about Mount Kilimanjaro is that a lot of us generally will not be able to climb Mount Everest. But Mount Kilimanjaro is strenuous enough that you can feel the challenge of it, but easy enough that anybody could do it. It is an amazing mountain.

What is your vision for the company for the medium term, the next two to three years? What do you want to have achieved?

At the moment, my ambition is survival through this COVID crisis. When this pandemic started, we were hoping for some return of traffic this June, July, August. It now looks more like in December there will be some returning traffic, but a lot of Europe is in lockdown. Europe for us is around 40% of our market. Our lucrative markets are America and Europe. Those are great markets. Actually, if you go back a few more months, around September, October, the biggest nationality that have come to visit Zanzibar was the French. We had a large contingent of French people. Then, France went into some lockdown restrictions so then that slowed down again. We cannot leave the virus; we just have to follow the virus and watch as these different areas come out of lockdown and come out and visit. For the medium term, we have been through a torrid period since 2017. I would like us to be well established as an internationally recognized brand. Coastal is well recognized within Tanzania. But we discussed international accreditation and being able to sit in America or Europe or India or China and have some affiliation to know that Coastal is the company to travel with. For me, that is the vision, but below that, that means safety, that means reliable operations, that means the trusted brand, that means commercially that we are in the ballpark, that we are creating value for money, and that we are being dynamic. When people come here, they should have the experience of a lifetime. The specifics around that are that we need to listen to the market. So, I would expect that we would add some different aircraft types and we would look to understand our market a little bit better. Generally, our customers come into the Serengeti. They do a few different lodges in different locations and then from there, they want to go to the beach. Over the last few seasons, we have been wet leasing capacity on a bigger, faster aircraft that connects the heart of the Serengeti to Zanzibar. The sales pitch around that was you can have your second cup of coffee in the Serengeti and you will be in Zanzibar in time for lunch. As time evolves, Coastal will be doing this under its own brand so that people have that level of comfort that international recognition applies on whichever flight you fly with Coastal.

Do you have any personal message to add?

We put together a couple of video clips during this coronavirus pandemic around the world. My personal favorite was entitled “We will be here waiting”. We will get through this and as things get easier, the beauty and magnificence of Tanzania is here and waiting and it has only gotten better. Because we have not had the masses of people visiting, nature has had a chance to heal itself. That video on its own is really quite therapeutic and uplifting at the same time. From an internal Coastal perspective, I am quite proud of our safety and our Coronavirus approach. There is a video clip that talks about maintenance, about crew, about our sanitization procedures, etc. We are waiting and all of this magnificence is here and when you are ready to fly, you can have that confidence in Coastal.

What was your ambition and drive to do what you do in this business?

Even as a child, I have wanted to be in aviation. Originally, I wanted to be a pilot, actually, but back in those days, pilots were not allowed to wear glasses. Aviation was in my blood from that age and I love the thrill of traveling, almost the romance of traveling. So even now, when I have time off, I like visiting new places, experiencing new cultures. And that has always been my passion. I spent 18 years with British Airways. I have worked in West Africa, all over Africa from Morocco to Mauritania, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, and now Egypt and Tanzania. Aviation is obviously my chosen career path, but I love Africa. There is a charm in Africa that you will not get anywhere else. There is a set of challenges, but it is great when you overcome them and you can see some of the great potential here.

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