Flying High Out of Africa

First-time passengers on Nairobi-based East African Airways are almost always noticeably nervous. And with reason. Emblazoned with the national colors (green, yellow, red, white, black and blue) of its three partners (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania), E.A.A. planes look like a wild trip even when they are on the ground. To make matters worse, travelers in Africa are usually aware that the line's 30,000-mile network covers some of the world's roughest terrain, including bush runways plagued with mud and giant anthills that can rise up between flights. Yet for all its drawbacks, E.A.A. is one of the world's most successful airlines.

It is probably the only line anywhere whose chief is just that: its chairman, Chief Abdullah Said Fundikira, 47, is a Cambridge-trained agricultural expert, a onetime Justice Minister of Tanganyika and, according to Wanyamwezi tribal lore, the reincarnation of a centuries-old rainmaker. Despite the chief's lineage, skies could hardly be clearer for him and his airline.

In 22 years, E.A.A. has compiled an estimable safety record, survived the turbulence of independence from Britain, built up a jet-age fleet that includes three Super VC-10s and three Comet 4s. Grandly declaring itself "the fastest-growing airline in black Africa," it has more than doubled revenues from 1962 to last year's record $36.4 million. And few airlines can claim anything like its earnings record. For each of the past 14 years, E.A.A. has had a comfortable profit; last year it cleared an estimated $700,000.

Intercontinental for Keeps. Fundikira is "proud that we have been setting the airline pace for the rest of black Africa," and now he is stepping it up. The international operations, which already include service to London, Paris, Rome, Bombay, Karachi and Aden, have just been expanded with flights to Athens. And after its fourth VC-10 arrives this year, E.A.A. will move on to Bangkok, then to Hong Kong, Denmark, Belgium and Switzerland.

E.A.A. has flown a long way from the wing-and-a-prayer operation that the British organized in 1946 to open up what was then known as British East Africa. Starting with six buzzing, roaring De Havilland biplanes, E.A.A. pilots crisscrossed the area's four territories--Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar (merged into Tanzania in 1964)--bringing air service to such remote spots as Lake Victoria and Kilimanjaro. When it ventured overseas in 1957 with DC-4 flights to London and Bombay, E.A.A. happily discovered that traffic in English civil servants and schoolboys could make up the losses on domestic flights. Going intercontinental for keeps, it boldly spent $6,000,000, or double its assets, to buy two Comets. E.A.A. soon had the planes paying handsomely by flying them 14 hours a day.

Besides long-range VC-10s and Comets, E.A.A. has four turboprop Fokker Friendships, eight DC-3s and two De Havilland Otter bush planes for short-range work in 21 countries where it operates. European routes are run as a joint venture with British Overseas Airways Corp. and British United Airways, Ltd., but E.A.A. bristles at the widely held notion that it is a BOAC subsidiary. The British airline did, in fact, take a shareholding in E.A.A. to help finance the Comet purchases, but E.A.A. bought it all back more than a year ago. Says Fundikira: "We have been flying entirely solo for some time now."

An Emphasis Back Home. E.A.A. is under pressure to increase its African staff, which accounts for more than 50% of its 4,000-man payroll, but so far most of the natives are in non-technical jobs. There are only six African flyers, all assigned to DC-3s as copilots. And with an eye toward his airline's safety image abroad, Fundikira refuses to press local employment beyond reason. "As a result," explains one E.A.A. official, "our brochures show a handsome British expatriate flying type chatting up the passengers. Back home, you understand, the emphasis is on Africanization."

Meanwhile, the line is trying to keep that profitable overseas traffic growing. Before long, E.A.A. types will be chatting it up in the U.S., where the airline plans to open a Manhattan office to drum up safari trade.

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