(Business in Cameroon) - Cameroon’s aviation authority revealed that 38% of the country domestic freights in 2016 took off from Garoua and Maroua-Salaka airports, in the northern region of Cameroon. Most of these flights were carried out by Camair Co, the airline public company.  It revealed this in an official memo which reviewed airline freight activities in Cameroon during 2016. It did not however reveal the statistics of the Ngaoundéré’s airport.

The air freights originating from these two airports and thus outranked the flights from Yaoundé-Nsimalen airport (in Cameroon’s capital suburb) and those from Douala, the country’s economic capital.

Indeed, statistics show that, in 2016, 27% of the domestic freight took off from Douala against 37% for Yaoundé-Nsimalen, which took the lead in this segment of air transport.

These figures could explain Camair-Co managers’ choice to increase flights (to/from) the northern part of Cameroon. "We used to use the same flight to serve the Ngaoundéré-Garoua-Yaoundé or Douala lines. This was the same case for the Garoua-Maroua-Yaoundé or Douala lines. With this new planning, there will not only be a dedicated flight for the northern part, but each destination will be autonomous,” one of Camair-Co managers said in February 2017.

In short, even though the new plan for the flights to Garoua, Maroua and Ngaoundéré emerged only some days after the reduction of Camrail (the rail carrier company) transport's capacities, to the northern part of Cameroon, on the Yaoundé-Ngaoundéré routes, the high demands for flights to the northern part also explain the frequency increase in Camair-co’s flights to part of the country. As for the reduction of Camrail’s transport’s capacity, it is the result of the removal of some defective wagons.

Brice R. Mbodiam