Flying high or low: who cares?

Flying high or low: who cares?

Because the local commercial airlines have a very dodgy track record, there’s only one which we are formally allowed to use – and it is part owned by Brussels Airlines. It flies between Kinshasa and Lubumbashi: that’s all.

For all other routes we have to use the UN system which is supposedly designed (though one sometimes marvels at its propensity for chaos . . .) to facilitate movement between UN bases: not for the convenience or comfort of development workers. Nevertheless, since it is largely funded by direct grants from, among others, the US and Britain, they cannot say no to requests from us to use their services. What they can say no to is to carrying non-essential staff when UN personnel need a seat. So the term “booking” has come to be used rather loosely. Yes, you’ve booked a place, but that means little if a UN person needs it. Just wait until the next flight, or maybe the one after that . . . And during the flights, some of which, with the numerous changes and circuitous routes can take all day, you get nothing more than water. The flights are operated by a strange galaxy of nations. Georgia had one route (which I think has now gone to Mexico), South Africa another, Canada a third. These operators bring out a plane or two, fly them around and then – oh sorry, we’ve got to take it for a service, so there will be no flights for a week or two.

The chorus of complaints that this system has caused, together with the total lack of customer service, a demand for something a bit more like a commercial service. The World Food Programme decided that enough was enough, so they launched their own service. Just as in the mainstream UN flights, the routes are operated by different national carriers, and just in the same way they are subject to the vagaries of servicing. In one flight I took, we were told that the weight limit had to be very strictly observed (to the extent that the passengers were weighed alongside their baggage) “as the plane was only half way through its service and if the load was too heavy it wouldn’t be able to take off”.

But there’s one big difference: unlike the UN service which is free, you actually buy a ticket. It’s a bit less than commercial tickets for the same distance, but it means that you have a confirmed place. And to underline the commercial nature of the transaction they give you a tiny cup of juice and a few biscuits during the flight. Mind you, not anyone can get on these flights. They have a very strict policy of only allowing registered staff of development agencies and implementing agencies to use the service: short term consultants and joy riders are completely forbidden.

But this place is, in truth a village. Before long you soon get to know the air crews and to understand that they too are human. They have needs, just like the rest of us. And they have faith – as you must to fly the skies of the Congo. And so when some crew members who are Muslims objected to flying on 26^th October because it is Eid-al-Adha, it was decided that there should be no flights at all that day, in their honour. Not just by Muslim crews, but all crews. Quick as a flash, the Catholics came back: if so, we are not going to fly on 1^st November: that is All Saints Day.

And thus it is: the village is happy. Any religious holiday will be observed by all. Why not? Once more the UN is setting an example in fair labour practice for all the world to copy.

(An aside: after a study of the poverty line in the DRC the UN decreed that the minimum wage for any employee was to be $600 a month. Thus cleaners in UN establishments get approximately six times the wages as anyone doing the same work in the private sector, something nearer that of a bank clerk).

Back to air travel. No one really minds that they cannot fly during those days unless they are stuck in some godforsaken hole at the back of beyond (which, to be fair, many of them will be), because what’s the point of doing today what you can put off until tomorrow?