In the midst of the doldrums only partly due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the airline company Air Algérie must complete its restructuring by 2024, the transport ministry planning by then for financial assistance of nearly two billion dollars for the acquisition of 30 new aircraft.
Quoted by the Arabic-language newspaper Echourouk, the supervisory authority of the national company based at Algiers-Houari Boumediene airport would have quantified the fleet renewal project: 250 billion dinars, or 1.59 billion euros. Air Algerie currently has 55 planes, 18 of which are grounded according to Planespotters, including fifteen ATR 72s, five Boeing 737-600s, two 737-700s, 25 737-800s (plus one convert for freight), and eight Airbus A330-200s. By which models they would be replaced is not specified. The commission in charge of the file is about to finalize this plan, adds the daily.
Especially since the situation of this fleet is not at best according to the same source: six 737NGs risk being grounded for reasons of urgent maintenance but difficult to pay (around 5 million dollars per engine). And the purchase of new reactors would almost double the bill.
The restructuring of the airline must mainly involve the separation of the group into distinct entities: several subsidiaries dedicated to passenger transport, and above all the creation of an entity dedicated to maintenance in partnership with foreign companies, affirmed last fall. Minister of Transport Aissa Bekkai. All within a framework that would see the emergence of nine new private companies, and the birth of a new Regulatory Authority.
Remember that no acquisition has been announced by Air Algérie since 2016 and the stated desire to buy 40 planes, a number that was revised downwards two years later (35 in 2018 ) and then limited to six in June 2019 by the Minister of transports. The fleet renewal program is “suspended until further notice due to the health crisis”, even announced at the end of 2020 the CEO Bekhouche Allache, the airline having then lost more than 250 million euros since the start of the pandemic.
In any case, the announced modernization of the Air Algérie fleet is eagerly awaited by French tour operators. The dry flight specialist Voldiscount, for example, specifies that while there is still a strong demand for Algeria from Paris and provincial towns, it is running into chronic under-capacity. Also, this discounter notes that airfares are bidding up in the low season if we refer to comparable periods of the year 2019.
