What is stopping a 64-year-old airline such as the Royal Air Maroc (RAM) from achieving success in the global aviation market? What makes it unable to bear the costs of its activities until it has become a burden on the budget of the Moroccan state, which is forced to pump millions of dollars into its treasury? And what makes it unable to develop despite flying alone in the kingdom’s sky for many years? Its fleet does not exceed 57 aircraft, its annual turnover does not exceed 1.6 billion dollars, and profits do not exceed 10 million dollars at best.
And another question, what is the economic model of this company, which is known for its high-priced tickets, yet it is not able to satisfy customers and is described among the world's worst airlines in the quality of services.
These annoying questions have a simple answer, it's all about the human element! Yes, the human element is what actually the Royal Air Maroc which was founded in 1957 suffers from. However, despite a long time working in the field of aviation, its image is linked to poor services on the ground and in the sky.
Since Mohamed Hassad, who headed the company from 1995 to 2001, and Mohamed Berrada between 2001 and 2006, and Driss Benhima from 2006 to 2016 and ending with Abdelhamid Addou, who has been heading the company since 2016, Royal Air Maroc has remained like a testing laboratory for every manager who heads it, Which has worsened the company’s services and has exacerbated its financial problems year after year, with a terrible drain on its reputation and an inability to keep pace with the development of regional airlines competing with it.
Deterioration of the company's finances and reputation
Since Abdelhamid Addou took over the management of the company in 2016, the state of Royal Air Maroc has not changed for the better. RAM continued to suffer from problems in its management, and other management defects accumulated on the company, in which the state owns most of its shares.
Since assuming the responsibility, Abdelhamid Addou has found himself facing three complex problems within Royal Air Maroc, which are obstacles that a source inside RAM said are similar to "Sisyphus rock", with which it is difficult for the company to climb to the top in light of tough competition with airlines that are rapidly developing and shaping their future.
The first of these problems, the source of "Assahifa English" added is the unqualified human element, whether in marketing or managing the company's ground services or even on planes, especially in the quality of services.
The second problem is the chaos inside RAM, with thousands of redundant employees with no specific assignments.
The third problem is the obsolescence of aircraft with an average age of 15 years, and their inability to compete on profitable medium and long-haul flights, which made them compete only on short distances with low-cost air carriers, especially after Morocco signed the Open Skies Agreement.
All of these problems and others were found by Abdelhamid Addou before him, but he preferred to deal with them with a lot of "cowardice". Thus commented a source from within the company, who confirmed that the general manager of RAM was not able to approach many files that remained unresolved and drain millions of dollars from the company's budget annually. From “giant” wages to names placed in major positions within the company, to “huge” privileges obtained by those who do not deserve them.
The same source stressed to "Assahifa English" that RAM was forced to contract with many handling companies, according to what he called a “game of influence” often found within state-affiliated companies, as the new general manager, Abdelhamid Addou continued to receive orders in this aspect from outside the company without opposing decisions that drain the budget of Royal Air Maroc without mercy.
Assahifa English source confirmed that many privileges are given to the company’s representatives in its offices in various capitals and cities of the world, where the compensation of some of them reaches 250 thousand dollars annually paid in hard currency, with opening offices in some capitals without economic feasibility, only, to satisfy some lucky people who have influence somewhere in the state!
Under the "cowardly management" of Abdelhamid Addou as for his predecessors, the profits of Royal Air Maroc were moving slowly in light of merciless competition with African companies, as is the case with Ethiopian Airlines, which achieved profits of more than $233 million in 2018, while Royal Air Maroc achieved 10 million dollars in the same year, carrying 7.5 million passengers, while Ethiopian Airlines carried more than 12 million passengers.
Ethiopian Airlines also owns more than 120 planes, through which it operates 123 international destinations, while Royal Air Maroc owns 57 planes after it sold six planes due to the recent crisis of the repercussions of the Coronavirus and they are operated through 80 international destinations, which shows the difference Between two companies that have the same regional status with a great privilege for Royal Air Maroc, which "fly solo" in West Africa without strong competition from regional or international companies, and despite that it finds it very difficult to achieve significant profits, win new customers or develop its services and fleet, while the Ethiopian Airlines has developed in light of strong competition from Middle Eastern companies that operate flights to southern and central Africa, such as Emirates, Qatar, and Turkish Airlines.
Addou's "failed" plans that exhausted RAM budget
In the same year, in which Abdelhamid Addou assumed the general management of Royal Air Maroc, he entered the company to his own field of experiments without feasibility as he opened a direct line between Casablanca and Nairobi, Kenya, using a Boeing 767 at the time.
After a year of "experiments", it was found that this line failed commercially, to be stopped, and direct flights between Casablanca and Nairobi were removed and replaced by an indirect line that passes through N'Djamena airport, the capital of Chad, with smaller Boeing 737 aircraft due to the lack of passengers, which is the same thing that it happened with many international destinations opened by Abdelhamid Addou before being removed from the direct airline program of Royal Air Maroc, such as the case with the Casablanca-Amman line, while many lines have known a catastrophic failure from a commercial point of view, as is the case with the direct line between Casablanca, Miami, and Boston, as well as the Casablanca, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo line.
All of these decisions made the company exhausted by many unnecessary financial burdens in its running, and it experienced losses of millions of dollars annually in these experimentation plans without economic feasibility for many of the lines that the general manager of RAM insisted on opening, which entered the company into financial distress that was exacerbated by the pilots strikes since 2017, and created a lot of tension within RAM.
By taking advantage of the repercussions of the pandemic Coronavirus, Abdelhamid Addou allocated 40 million euros to expel 95 pilots and dozens of employees, including flight attendants and others, who received “imaginary” compensation, under the “economic layoff”.
Bad reputation and poor services
You rarely could find someone praising the services of Royal Air Maroc. The company that markets itself as the "Wings of Morocco" to the world, presents a bad image of the Kingdom of Morocco because of its poor services and a bad reputation.
Passengers complain about poor services when booking flight tickets, when modifying booking dates or when obtaining information regarding details of baggage loss or delay in arriving on the same flight, in addition to the problems of canceling flights without adequate information for passengers or postponing them without taking care of passengers, in many cases, in violation of the laws regulating such cases.
The inefficiency of the company’s employees in communicating, in particular, has become very costly for Royal Air Maroc, which has become the talk of many international media, as when the European Court in 2018 invalidated the refusal made by “Ram” in a case of compensation for a German passenger who was on a plane belonging to Royal Air Maroc on a flight between Berlin and Agadir before the passenger found that her seat had been given to someone else, which made her wait more than four hours to take another flight to her destination and prompted her, after that, to file a lawsuit against Moroccan Airlines, where she ruled The European Court compensates the German traveler for the damages she sustained.
Although the company issues a lot of communications to deny many of the problems facing its services, but those responsible for RAM found themselves in 2019 in a “very embarrassing” situation, in the midst of Morocco’s joy of the success of the visit of Prince Harry, and his wife Princess Megan, and the greatness that it gave to the historical and natural spaces of the country, its heritage, and its cuisine, as the British royal family photographers blew up part of this picture after announcing the loss of their bags on board the RAM flight.
Paradoxically, the photographers Mark, Arthur, and Rocky, who were directly responsible for promoting Morocco, put their fingers on one of the most obstacles to tourism growth in this country, after they published on their social media accounts the story of the loss of their bags, blaming Royal Air Maroc, which they said it didn't bother finding a solution for them.
But the royal family's photographers are not the only Britons to have expressed their anger at RAM. The former British ambassador to Rabat, Thomas Reilly, insisted on making the company's scandals public through his account on Twitter, through which he complained about his suffering with RAM.
The British ambassador’s criticism centered on the company’s poor services, as he wrote on June 23, 2019, on his Twitter account: “Am I the only one who feels this, or has the company reduced the legroom between the seats,” describing the flights as uncomfortable, and then on June 27 of the same month tweeted, "The Royal Air Maroc flight was an hour late to take off from London," and he continued, "We arrived an hour ago at Casablanca airport, and we still did not get our luggage. We should not be surprised if people are angry."
This comes at a time when an American citizen who arrived in Morocco in the same year (2019) published through her personal account on Facebook a message she received from one of the company’s employees after he used her personal data, which should not be used for non-professional purposes.
And the American young woman named Maria Gladstone published the text of the message she received via “WhatsApp” from the person concerned, in which he said that employees are usually prohibited from using the personal data of travelers, but when he saw her during her arrival at Casablanca airport, he decided to “gamble” and he took her number from her data list to send her a message.
The American citizen, who had arrived at Mohammed V International Airport on December 2, 2019, was surprised by the behavior of the RAM employee, stating that the person in question had access to her number by accessing the passenger data system, wondering if he had obtained her address too, before she added with a sarcastic phrase, "I feel very safe because of this topic!".
The poor quality of Royal Air Maroc services, not limited to the loss of bags or delays in flights and poor communication, but the matter is exacerbated by the lack of attention to the planes, where the lack of hygiene, the inappropriate smells inside the cabins, and the lack of entertainment services provided on long flights from movies, music, and programs.
The behavior of the flight attendants on board the RAM flights is another story, where the lack of training in dealing with the company's customers, the dry language used towards the passengers, and appearances are not appropriate for the profession, unlike most airlines that respect themselves and their passengers and take care of the appearance of the hosts and their good treatment and service to the passenger in the highest levels, where the service is at least equal to the value paid for the ticket, in which the RAM's tickets are considered among the most expensive in the world.
Why RAM refuses to diversify its aircraft from European Airbus?
RAM purchases most of its planes from the American company "Boeing", and there is currently no plane from the European competitor "Airbus", whose planes are characterized as being the least expensive and less subject to accidents and technical problems during the past two decades.
However, RAM prefers to supply its fleet exclusively from the American "Boeing", as a source from within the company confirmed to "The newspaper", that the matter is due to a political decision from the highest authority in the country that was taken in the nineties of the last century, as "a clear decision" came for unknown reasons, to make the entire fleet of Royal Air Maroc consist of aircraft from the American company “Boeing”, without knowing to this day the economic feasibility of this decision or its financial consequences.
The source of Assahifa English added that this decision made RAM to support its fleet with Boeing aircraft in particular, and to abandon the last “Airbus 321” aircraft in its fleet in 2011 by a decision of the former Director General, Driss Benhima, and this was justified by “lowering the costs of Maintenance” where the formation of engineers for maintenance of more than one type of aircraft “has become costly” for the company.
The same sources added that the cost of training pilots on many types of aircraft has also become a financial burden on the company. Therefore, the company's policy continued to rely solely on Boeing to enhance its fleet while gradually starting to rely on Embraer aircraft, especially on domestic flights.
Despite all these “unconvincing” justifications, the Boeing accidents and their impact on RAM's future, obliges the company to redraw its strategy, by diversifying its fleet, as is the case with companies close to Royal Air Maroc, such as “EgyptAir” or "Ethiopian", and the largest international companies have begun to rely more on modern aircraft for medium and long flights and the most economical in operating cost, such as Airbus A350-9000 and A350-1000, which are considered the future of aviation, especially after the repercussions of the Coronavirus pandemic, which imposed new rules for international airlines by searching for the economic feasibility in the type of aircraft used for the future.
Aviation Kerosene sold by Akhannouch: RAM complains
At a time when Abdelhamid Addou complained about the cost of jet fuel "Aviation kerosene" and asserted to parliamentarians that the company’s jet fuel constituted 30% of RAM’s operating cost. The financial value with which Africa company (owned by billionaire and current Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch) sells Aviation kerosene to RAM appeared on the surface.
Africa is considered to have a near-total monopoly on the market for selling and storing jet fuel in Morocco, which is reflected in the number of RAM's transactions and flight tickets.
The former director of RAM, Driss Benhima, had previously criticized Africa's sale of kerosene at high prices to Royal Air Maroc, which is reflected in the value of tickets sold, a statement he later retracted; however, it was among the reasons for his dismissal. He was removed from his position in 2016 and Abdelhamid Addou was appointed in his place.
In light of the limited competition, companies that sell jet fuel in Morocco become controlling the "kerosene" market and sell it at the prices that suit them, which is directly reflected in the sale of tickets, and the profit margin.
Privatization: is it the solution?
In light of the accumulation of all these structural problems in managing a company of the size of Royal Air Maroc, which is the national carrier, and the lifter of tourism, and the country's image abroad, it becomes necessary to search for practical solutions, as many countries have done, in order to reduce the losses of RAM that exceeded 5 million dollars a day, when the company stopped flying due to the Coronavirus pandemic, which made it sell its planes and give up its best pilots so that it could fly again.
In this context, a source from within Royal Air Maroc confirmed to Assahifa English that Royal Air Maroc must find a realistic solution if it wants to "preserve its African destinations, develop its fleet, and face its fatal losses due to the repercussions of Coronavirus."
Abdelhamid Addou, Director General of Royal Air Maroc, had confirmed earlier that the repercussions of the Coronavirus cost the company 50 percent of its turnover after its activity decreased by 60% in March and 100% in April of last year (2020), noting that RAM is going through the "worst crisis" in its history.
For his part, a government source confirmed that the government support that RAM is waiting for and demanded by General Director, will not be sufficient to save the company nor to develop it, indicating in an exclusive statement to Assahifa English that the logical and practical solution is to open the capital of the company for investment, whether national or foreign.
It is known that Royal Air Maroc's capital is 54% owned by the Moroccan state and 44% owned by the Hassan II Fund for Economic and Social Development, and different percentages of other companies such as Royal Holding SNI and Air France, while Spanish Airlines "Iberia" owns the remaining 2%.
The same source added that, in general, RAM is a state-owned company, directly or indirectly, through state-affiliated companies, which means that opening the company's capital requires a political decision from the highest authority in the country.
In this context, a source from within RAM commented on the idea of opening the capital of Royal Air Maroc to save it, as well as developing the company to expand its lines and support the fleet, saying: "We hope so."
In waiting the company to be transformed from a "notorious" brand at home and abroad to a brand that positively promotes the Kingdom's image, as do international airlines, such as Emirates, Turkish, Ethiopian airlines, the question remains: When will Royal Air Maroc be restructured, reduce the bleeding of state funds, and close the “faucet” for the privileges that some employees illegally obtain? And before that, when will the mentalities that still think “inside the box” be developed?!
