South Africa Deluxe sat down with Martin Banner, Chief Executive Officer of National Airways Corporation Proprietary Limited (NAC), to talk about travelling through Africa and the Middle East, and the benefits of working with an experienced air charter company.

banner explains that travelling on the african continent presents a

unique set of challenges, “this is mostly due to the inadequate road,

rail and air transport infrastructure. While the most efficient way to

get around the continent has been to fly, it certainly hasn’t been easy.

historically if you wanted to fly into luanda, lagos, the dRc or similar

other destinations, there really weren't decent airlines options. you

typically had to fly to europe and make a connection from there, but a

lot has changed over the past decade.

"today those main routes are serviced very efficiently by the

commercial airlines. From Johannesburg, you can now catch a very

regular airline service to brazzaville, dar-es salam, Kinshasa, lagos,

luanda and nairobi to name just a few,so flying into the major centres

really has become a lot easier. It’s flying from there to wherever else

you need to go however, that is the real challenge, particularly as

frequency of flights to smaller centres and the quality of the regional

carriers is not that great." ph

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Flyingnational airWays

Corporation Transcontinental Charter and International Operations

thE bEnEfitS of intErnAtionAl chArtEr

While it’s become much easier flying to major hubs across the continent

today, there are still many challenges which affect productivity and

more importantly the safety of travellers to these regions. While flying

locally, there is less stress; you're operating in well-controlled airspace,

with a decent airport infrastructure. It's when you move from the local

flights, to the more long distance flights into africa and beyond that

things can get a bit tenuous.

banner shares that when you're taking executives to challenging

business sites across africa, you really need to know your business and

have people on the ground who understand the security risks. When

you are flying into these remote areas, it is difficult to get to understand

how the system on the ground works regarding refuelling, parking,

customs clearance, transport and flight clearances etc. It's critical to

have a good understanding of how to get around on the ground and how

to avoid the corruption and other issues that can arise.

banner says that nac has developed their processes to make those

procedures very seamless for their clients, "they board the aircraft

here, disembark at their destination and are met by our local agents

who transfer them to their ground transport, and off they go. our aim is

to remove all the hassle of transcontinental travel for them."

Working to your oWn SchEDulE

charter travel is efficient, comfortable and flexible. besides the

security, privacy and time-saving benefits that come with taking a

charter flight, one of the biggest pros is the convenience of working

to your own schedule. In order to ensure that it is offering a valuable

service to their clients, nac regularly perform client surveys, in order

to identify the areas in which its clients are expanding across the

african continent.

the company regularly works with multinational corporates within

the telecommunications and mining sector, for example, who are

expanding their footprint into the likes of angola, the dRc, nigeria,

ghana and mali. logistics prove to be a major challenge for these

businesses, as it can take a month to visit their branch offices and this

means a lot of downtime, often without decent internet connectivity,

which means their executives are unable to work on the move.

martin cites a recent example where an executive of a major corporate

approached nac to investigate charter options for his african travels.

he was spending three weeks of every month travelling through africa

to reach his branches, and most of that time was wasted, sitting in

airports waiting for connecting flights. nac was able to assist in

scheduling his flights so that the round trip was completed in one

week, which resulted in the executive gaining two productive weeks

per month back into his schedule.

In addition to their ad hoc charter services, where a client will phone

up with a special requirement to fly a set number of passengers on a

specific date to a specific destination, nac also services numerous

long-term contract clients, such as major mining houses, whose

executives are flown to their mines on a regular basis.

84 I South AfricA DEluxE I SECUrIty SpECIal airways I 85

HUMANITARIAN SUPPORT where and when it’s needed

www.nac.co.za Find us on Facebook fly_nac @fly_nacFollow us on Twitter

AIRCRAFT SALES | MAINTENANCE | PARTS | CHARTER | INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS | PILOT TRAINING | FINANCE AND INSURANCE

International Operations with expertise that encompasses away-from-base flight operations, aircraft maintenance, management and support services with full ACMI lease options on our aircraft.

International Operations: Tel. +27 11 267 5000 | Email. jannie.deklerk@nac.co.za | Email. marketing@nac.co.zaISO 9001:2008 Quality assured

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Charter

intErnAtionAl oPErAtionS

nac also operates International operations - long term away from

base contracts, where they reposition an aircraft, crew, maintenance,

parts, basically a whole aviation solution that they will set up in a

specific country for a client. they provide what they term an acmI,

an aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance solution to their clients.

this is particularly useful for clients, such as those in the mining

sector who are developing a mine in africa, who have a specific need

for an aircraft to transport 12 passengers from the capital to the mine

site on a daily basis. In this instance an entire operation will be set up

for them there for the duration of their contract, whether it is for three,

six or twelve months -however long the client needs it. nac provides a

full turn-key solution, supported by south african aviation standards

maintenance crews.

SAfEty firSt

Frequently what drives their International operations division is some

kind of disaster relief, whether it is humanitarian relief, war relief, or

some kind of geographical or natural disaster such as the tsunami that

hit banda aceh, Indonesia, nac were the first people there with airlift

support, sending in five helicopters that stayed up there for almost

18 months supporting the recovery and repatriation efforts. nac also

operate regularly in areas like afghanistan, Iraq, and sudan supporting

non-profit relief organisations. Work in war zones is particularly

challenging and nac’s teams on the ground in those locations are

experts in their field, and no logistics are left to chance.

the threat to aircraft in these regions from man portable air defence

systems (manpads) is an unfortunate reality. It is estimated there are

more than 100,000 of these shoulder-fired heat-seeking surface-to-air

missile launchers on the black market today. nac was the first civil

aviation company to put an approved civil aircraft missile protection

system (camps) onto a civil aircraft. the camps is a one of a kind

system that was specifically developed to target ground to air missiles

in hostile environments and uses the latest pyrophoric technology

which is invisible to the naked eye.

nac fitted the system to a selection of their embraer emb120eR aircraft

which are capable of carrying up to 30 passengers. this system has

also been proven to be very popular with the united nations who often

operates in high risk areas. nac has operated such aircraft for the past

eight years in areas such as Iraq, flying passengers in and out of high risk

areas where most civil aircraft are not comfortable flying.

International operations is very needs driven and is very customer-

centric, and there are high demands and expectations of service

providers operating in such environments and for such clients. nac is

Iso 9001:2008 accredited, and has also been successfully audited by

the south african caa, shell, bhp billiton, hart aviation services, united

nations & un World Food program, amongst others. lindsay grubb

ph

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