The woes of Royal Air Maroc
Blog: The View from Fez - 4 September 2009
By: Sandy McCutcheon
Royal Air Maroc is going through a very turbulant patch at the moment, with complaints about service, prices and an ongoing series of strikes by pilots which grounded a majority of the airline's aircraft ~ Ibn Warraq reports from Casablanca:
Last week Royal Air Maroc (RAM) had to weather the storm of adverse publicity when a news went around the world of a child "abandoned" at JFK airport in the USA. The child's mother went to the media with this story...
I have been traveling back and forth from the US to Morocco for the past 25 years.
I sent my daughter back home to visit her grandparents. I paid their partner Delta Airlines for child accompaniment both ways. On the way there, the Delta staff took charge of her in Orlando and delivered her to RAM at JFK.
Upon the return, the RAM staff at Mohammed V Airport decided not to honor the child accompaniment, because, the child was 12 and Delta Airlines standard was different from theirs. Only there were few issues at hand:
- The service was prepaid and it was a legal contract binding all parties involved.
- The child had to return home on that date.
Without any sense of decency or regards for the prepaid service, they refused to escort her through customs and deliver to Delta for her connecting flight. They were simply unloading the child at JFK without any care of what could happen to her upon her arrival in NY.
Lucky enough, my folks found a Moroccan family that was flying to Orlando and were gracious enough to take the child under their wing during the transit.
The pilots' strike continues...
I have been traveling back and forth from the US to Morocco for the past 25 years.
I sent my daughter back home to visit her grandparents. I paid their partner Delta Airlines for child accompaniment both ways. On the way there, the Delta staff took charge of her in Orlando and delivered her to RAM at JFK.
Upon the return, the RAM staff at Mohammed V Airport decided not to honor the child accompaniment, because, the child was 12 and Delta Airlines standard was different from theirs. Only there were few issues at hand:
- The service was prepaid and it was a legal contract binding all parties involved.
- The child had to return home on that date.
Without any sense of decency or regards for the prepaid service, they refused to escort her through customs and deliver to Delta for her connecting flight. They were simply unloading the child at JFK without any care of what could happen to her upon her arrival in NY.
Lucky enough, my folks found a Moroccan family that was flying to Orlando and were gracious enough to take the child under their wing during the transit.
There was a lot more to this story carried on the Moroccan/American website: See here
High Prices
There have been rumblings for a long time, particularly in the USA about poor service and high prices. In Europe RAM is also criticised because of its price structure. A recent comparison of prices for flights from Casablanca to Paris showed a huge discrepancy. A RAM economy seat, one way was 8590 dirhams (760 Euro). The first low cost airline we contacted offered a 20 euro (plus taxes) ticket. To put that in perspective, for just 10% more than the RAM price it is possible to buy a ticket from Sydney, Australia to Casablanca.
High Prices
There have been rumblings for a long time, particularly in the USA about poor service and high prices. In Europe RAM is also criticised because of its price structure. A recent comparison of prices for flights from Casablanca to Paris showed a huge discrepancy. A RAM economy seat, one way was 8590 dirhams (760 Euro). The first low cost airline we contacted offered a 20 euro (plus taxes) ticket. To put that in perspective, for just 10% more than the RAM price it is possible to buy a ticket from Sydney, Australia to Casablanca.
The pilots' strike continues...
And now, to add to their troubles, the pilots' strike which was supposedly well on the way to resolution, has flared up again with a majority of RAM aircraft grounded. RecentlyThe View from Fezreported that Moroccan pilots were demanding the "Moroccanisation of the captains' posts," better pay for airline technicians and other social grievances.
RAM says it was forced to recruit foreign pilots because its fleet doubled in size to 60 aircraft since 2000. The carrier also says it is making great efforts to train Moroccan pilots to overcome the current shortage but the Moroccan pilots association argues there are enough experienced national pilots to overcome the need to hire foreigners.
The strikes, which caused losses of almost a million euros per day, occurred at the peak of the air travel season, with a high volume of tourists, transit passengers and expatriate Moroccans returning home on holiday
Now the dispute has flared again with officials at the airline warning passengers of "traffic disruption" because of the latest stoppage. They were not immediately available to give more details.
"The strike, which had begun on Thursday afternoon, had paralysed almost all the fleet of the airline as 96 percent of the pilots walked out," said Nejib Ibrahimi, head of the RAM's Moroccan Pilots Association, which has 400 members.
It was the latest in a series of strike by RAM's pilots this year, including two three-day stoppages last month.
RAM, one of the most profitable airlines in North Africa, had repeatedly rejected the pilots' demand that it give priority to Moroccans over foreign pilots at its low-cost subsidiaries Atlas Blue and RAM Express. It argues that it made sense to hire non-Moroccans whose salaries are more than 20 percent lower.
RAM says it was forced to recruit foreign pilots because its fleet doubled in size to 60 aircraft since 2000. The carrier also says it is making great efforts to train Moroccan pilots to overcome the current shortage but the Moroccan pilots association argues there are enough experienced national pilots to overcome the need to hire foreigners.
The strikes, which caused losses of almost a million euros per day, occurred at the peak of the air travel season, with a high volume of tourists, transit passengers and expatriate Moroccans returning home on holiday
Now the dispute has flared again with officials at the airline warning passengers of "traffic disruption" because of the latest stoppage. They were not immediately available to give more details.
"The strike, which had begun on Thursday afternoon, had paralysed almost all the fleet of the airline as 96 percent of the pilots walked out," said Nejib Ibrahimi, head of the RAM's Moroccan Pilots Association, which has 400 members.
It was the latest in a series of strike by RAM's pilots this year, including two three-day stoppages last month.
RAM, one of the most profitable airlines in North Africa, had repeatedly rejected the pilots' demand that it give priority to Moroccans over foreign pilots at its low-cost subsidiaries Atlas Blue and RAM Express. It argues that it made sense to hire non-Moroccans whose salaries are more than 20 percent lower.
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