A country’s airline is more than a carrier of people, goods

A Kenya Airways plane at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi. (Photo: Courtesy)

A country’s airline is more than a carrier of people and goods. It is a symbol of patriotism and pride. Together with the airport, they encapsulate what is good and what is awful about a country. Thus British Airways and Heathrow say a lot about the United Kingdom just like Air France and Charles de Gaulle airport says about France and so does the KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines) and Amsterdam about The Netherlands.

The decline and fall of the Soviet Union could be attributed to the decrepit state of its airports. The absence of a national carrier or an airport thus became a way of gauging how low an African country had sunk. There are accounts of heads of state flying a plane-full of coterie on junkets across the world. National carriers were rerouted to take the Big Men’s spouses and girlfriends for tax-funded shopping sprees in European capitals.