FROM MAGAZINE: Bruce Dickinson, the creative maverick

He is a rock legend and the frontman of Iron Maiden, one of the biggest music bands on the planet. He is one of world’s most storied musicians. He is a pilot, an aviation entrepreneur, a beer brewer, motivational speaker, film scriptwriter, twice-published novelist, radio presenter, TV actor and a world-class fencer. His company Cardiff Aviation has been contracted by the government of Djibouti to revive the East African nation’s flag carrier. Bruce Dickinson, in an exclusive interview with Logistics Update Africa, speaks to Reji John, about his passion for aviation, the plans to revitalize the once-liquidated Air Djibouti and being creative as a multifaceted person.

Djibouti and signing the MoU with Air Djibouti
I am quite interested in Djibouti. I was aware of how strategic it was in terms of its position in Africa geographically. I thought the place itself is quite charming and had a great deal of potential. I had done a lot of flying in West Africa. I delivered the very first aircraft, which was a Boeing 737, flying from Cardiff to Djibouti. Then it went into passenger service. We have moved on now to a point where a lot of things are working very well down there for the airline. We finally got over the initial launch phase.

What is the plan ahead?
The key now is to rationalize the whole set up to target the real growth areas. Obviously freight is important. The plan, in the near future, is to take a 737 freighter down there to redistribute goods that come into the Djibouti sea port to countries around in Africa and the Middle East. Because of its proximity to the global sea trade route we have a crazy situation where aircraft from the UAE are flying into Djibouti empty and taking goods back to the UAE or taking them onwards to Africa. Well, that is very nice for UAE, Djibouti should be doing that.

Tailwinds for air cargo in Djibouti
There are two things that we need to do. One is to put a cargo aircraft that can distribute within three or four hours locally and the other one that we are looking at is the distribution using a wide body. Obviously that is going to be a little bit more challenging. Once the terminal really starts producing stuff we will look at moving stuff not just locally in Africa but across the continent. Because sea-air cargo is a huge market and to get the goods from East Africa to West Africa by sea takes an enormous amount of time. That requires a degree of infrastructure in the airport itself. We are in the process of securing for Djibouti the appropriate investment in ground equipment and security equipment to enable proper warehousing facilities. We can then move to the next phase which is putting an aircraft in place.

Passenger side of the aviation business
The passenger elements here are a bit more straight forward. The aircraft that we have in at the moment is a Boeing 737 and we also have an Avro RJ. What we are proposing to do over the course of the next year or so is the renewal of the fleet. We are looking at actually purchasing new aircraft. We are in the middle of looking at a 70-seat regional airliner of some description. We are fairly well advanced on that. There will be two of those and what they will enable us to do is to fly all the regional routes like Addis, Mogadishu, perhaps Yemen. But in addition to that, we then need the big key to open the box in Djibouti which is direct transport links to Europe. To that end the Boeing 767-200 which is owned by the Republic of Djibouti is in my hanger in Cardiff right now, in pieces, being put back together and given an upgrade. She would come out, I would estimate, in the middle to the end of October this year. Once we get the aircraft out and get the crew, we can start launching services to London and possibly Paris; probably launch scheduled services, I would think, by next spring. Because we are going to need some time to promote and market and make people aware of the service. But I would imagine that we would certainly be looking to operate the aircraft possibly on a charter basis to and from Europe much before. There is no reason why we couldn’t do that. I would imagine that there would also be a requirement above and beyond the two regional airliners. There might be requirement as we get traffic growth possibly for a slightly larger and long range jet that could do, for example, India and obviously to the Gulf destinations. 767 of course is a good machine. It is extremely long range. It would, for example, be very comfortable flying Djibouti to China nonstop. Or it could do Lagos nonstop, no problems at all.

When do you think your 737 freighter enter into the fleet. Will that happen this year?
That depends on two things: first, investment and second, on the development of the cargo facilities on the ground at the airport. It would be fantastic if we could get a freighter operation up and running. But the limitation on the freighter operation is actually not the operation of the aircraft, the limitation is of the infrastructure around the airport itself.

Are you happy with the way things have shaped up for Air Djibouti?
Well, actually, I am. The one thing we have done is we kept the cost down to the minimum, we have created a situation where the airline is flourishing; it is stable and as a result it is able to attract the kind of investment that it needs to grow to the next level. So, we are pleased that we have done that. And we have done that without wasting huge amounts of government money. One of the reasons that we loved the idea of the “airline in a box” is that we can come in and look at something as a two or three year project. You start the airline, you get it up and running and then we can be as involved or not as involved as our partners want us to be at that point.

The next stage for Air Djibouti is actually above and beyond running freight and passenger services. The next stage for Air Djibouti is to returning to its regulatory authorities to follow ICAO compliance which means Air Djibouti will be able to have its own aircraft, its own registrations with its own airline operating certificate. At the moment, obviously, anything that comes out of Djibouti and flies internationally has to operate on somebody else’s airline certificate. The ideal situation in Djibouti is to have its own regulatory authority. We are working towards that with the government and ICAO to get compliance so that Air Djibouti can fly unrestricted under its own steam as they were to anywhere in the world.

Do you have a specific timeline when would this happen?
I would be very disappointed if we didn’t have it within the next one year.

What gives you the confidence that you can turn this around?
I am actually very confident. The key is to put in place sensible, pragmatic financial controls. We have done that. Steve Clarke, the chief financial officer in Air Djibouti is very good. I have known him for a long time from the UK. It is really important to have very robust controls. Traditionally in many jurisdictions there have been opportunities for money to not be used for appropriate purposes. We don’t want that to happen. We want to run Air Djibouti as close as possible to the gold standards of accountability. I think that it is a great opportunity to demonstrate and it is not necessarily risky to go into Africa and start a business in collaboration with Africans and come out with a great result. Because there are plenty of people in Djibouti who are extremely capable and wants to do the right things. We have always worked on the basis that we have a tightly controlled costs and I think some of the startup airlines in Africa have started out almost with too much money initially and they wasted it rapidly. By the way, this is not necessarily just about African airlines; this is also about European airlines coming into Africa with huge amounts of money and blows all of it. When we started Air Djibouti, we started it with airplanes which actually were quite old. My airplanes are not only old but they are also very cheap which means that we are not going to go bust.

So start simple, start common sense and then when you have established your market, you can go and get something appropriate. That is why we are going for a 70-seater regional aircraft because we can fill it and you know what, if the airplanes are always full then we just get another one. So that is the way to build it. You don’t want your airplanes flying empty. Going with a 200-seat jet which was only flying 70 passengers would actually be a disaster. We are absolutely on the right track.

Doing business with African partners
With Cardiff, we were looking to expand into other areas, not just with Air Djibouti but with countries. And we are speaking to some other clients at the moment. And they all like what we have done in Djibouti and they want something similar to be done in their country. Which is fabulous to us and we love to do it. Though we have to look at each situation on a case by case basis because it is important to look at the market to analyse everything and we can do that really quite inexpensively. And we won’t charge them a million dollars! The reason I say a million dollars is because I have seen some western airlines companies charging those kinds of sums to come up with documents that, frankly, a school kid with access to internet could generate in three days. This gives airline companies both western and African a very bad name. The client realises that they are exploited. Western companies also often think that they can take the money out of Africa and just walk away. They feel they have nothing to lose and they can always blame, oh, it’s just Africa. It is not a good business practice. Both western and African companies need to get really serious about how they spend their money and control their costs. We have been absolutely stingy with Air Djibouti and their money.

Cross learning from two of your passions – music and aviation
When you look at coming up with any creative business idea it is a little bit like writing a song. You come up with the initial concept and say: wah, that’s great. It is like writing the chorus and say that I like that, that is catchy; then follows the rest of the hard work. So all those things are, what I call, perspirations not the inspirations. But you need to have a nice little inspired business idea. You can’t run a business like an airline on inspiration alone, that needs to be there, but the back up of the details and the hard work have to be done in the background. It is the same for music.

Flying the Boeing 747
It was immense. When I started flying nearly 30 years ago I never believed that I would, one day, be the captain of a 747 and fly across the Pacific. It was a dream that is impossible even to dream of. But my fantasy life would be flying the 747. It is such a beautiful aircraft.

Most memorable flight
Flying out of Los Ageless and landing in Haneda airport in Tokyo; the longest flight that I have ever done in command — 12.30 hrs. It was also the one that had the most amount of fuel.