KHARTOUM: A major Sudanese airline serving South Sudan and the Middle East suspended operations yesterday, blaming American sanctions, as a document confirmed German carrier Lufthansa will also end flights to Sudan.
“As from today, it was the last flight from Marsland,” Rashid Ortashi, chairman of Marsland Aviation, said in an interview.
The private airline, which he founded in 2001, flew to the South Sudanese capital Juba, two destinations in Sudan’s Darfur region as well as Jeddah and Cairo.
“We are really begging, begging the USA to lift the sanctions on the private companies in Sudan. They are dying,” Ortashi said.
A document said Germany’s Lufthansa, the last European airline with direct flights to Sudan, will end its service between Frankfurt and Khartoum on January 19.
“Lufthansa offers its customers an extensive worldwide network and regularly monitors its profitability,” says the letter to clients dated October 22 and signed by Hartmut Volz, the airline’s Sudan general manager.
“In this context it was decided to suspend services from Frankfurt to Khartoum.”
An industry source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said “the station is not doing well,” and that 12 staff will lose their jobs.
Early this year the Dutch carrier KLM ended direct flights between Amsterdam and Khartoum, citing rising costs.
Ortashi said foreign carriers were selling tickets in Sudanese pounds but had trouble converting their proceeds into US dollars for repatriation because of a shortage of hard currency in Sudan, which was the main reason they were pulling out of the market.
Turkish Airlines as well as some African and Middle Eastern carriers still fly to Sudan.
For Marsland, American economic sanctions meant its three leased Boeing 737 jets could not be registered in Sudan but had to be listed in Georgia and Gambia at double the cost, Ortashi said. “It’s not economical at all,” Ortashi said, noting that his company had suffered losses of around $3.5 million in six months. The government’s September decision to slash fuel subsidies added to the problem, he said.
Retail prices for gasoline and diesel rose more than 60 percent, sparking the worst urban unrest of President Omar Hasan Al Bashir’s 24 years in power.
Dozens of people were killed. Ortashi said Marsland switched from Russian aircraft to American Boeings in 2009 because of their better fuel economy and reliability. “We thought we could solve the problem of spare parts and maintenance, but we found it really difficult,” he said.
Ortashi said that Marsland’s 260 local employees will now lose their jobs unless the company can obtain emergency funding to allow it to stay afloat.
The US imposed the trade embargo in 1997 over Sudan’s support for terrorism, efforts to destabilise neighbouring governments and human rights violations.AFP
