Closure of Douala Airport causes hardship to passengers

The temporary closure of the Douala International Airport until March 21, 2016, for renovations has been trailed with many hardships. The airport was shut down on March 1, 2016, for the last phase of a rehabilitation project that started in 2014.

Workers of the airport have been put on technical leave; while others like the porters (bagagistes) are also temporarily out of jobs. All businesses operating at the Douala Airport have also been shutdown with all the imaginable financial losses incurred by the proprietors.

Only security officers guarding the infrastructures of the airport are still at work. Besides causing hardships to travellers and air transport companies, the closure has also exposed the indifference of the Cameroon government towards the maintenance of the airport and the construction of a second runway.

Passengers have been grappling with extra financial costs, transit difficulties, frequent changes and cancellations in flight schedules and other inconveniences caused by the closure of the Douala International Airport.

EventhoughTransport Minister Edgard Alain MebeNgoh and authorities of the YaoundeNsimalen International Airport have been trying to downplay the difficulties caused by the closure of Douala Airport, passengers in the Littoral, Southwest, West and Northwest Regions, are now forced to travel to Yaounde to board their flights at the Nsimalen International Airport.

Passengers into Cameroon with Douala as destination, have to stop at Nsimalen Airport and travel by road or by rail for some three hours or more to Douala; all inconveniences and risks included.

Meanwhile, foreign airlines companies that have their local branches in Douala have had to move their offices, personnel and equipment over to Nsimalen Airport.

This also means providing lodging for all the personnel moved to Yaounde. The national carrier, the Cameroon Airlines Corporation, has, among other things, been forced to suspend flights on its Douala-Yaounde route.

The financial losses caused by the closure of the international airport can only be imagined in the millions since Aeroport du Cameroun, ADC, which manages Cameroon’s airports, says the Douala Airport alone handles over 70 percent of the international commercial flights of the country.

ADC also says that the Douala Airport alone generates over 80 percent of the revenue of the corporation’s annual revenue.

The hub of commercial air transport in the Central Africa sub-Region, Douala Airport was constructed in the 70s.

For some 40 years, the international airport has operated on only one runway. The government only turned its attention to the airport after the International Civil Aviation Authority, ICAO, threatened to uncategorised the airport if it was not rehabilitated by July 2016.