The Afghanistan Civil Aviation Authority (ACAA) has threatened several of the country's scheduled carriers with closure for allegedly flouting local ageing-aircraft regulations and for tax evasion.
The Wall Street Journal says that of Afghanistan's carriers, the ACAA has singled out Safi Airways (Kabul), Kam Air (RQ, Kabul), and East Horizon Airlines (Kabul) as the most prominent violators of local regulations.
ACAA has reportedly demanded Safi Airways pay USD16 million in back-dated taxes. The carrier, Afghanistan's largest private airline, has disputed the figure and has asked for added time to pay. For its part Kam Air, another private airline, has been sent a USD14 million bill.
For its part, East Horizon Airlines, the country’s third private airline, has been grounded since December 2015 for violating local ageing aircraft regulations. At the time, East Horizon operated a pair of An-24RVs and a BAe 748.
While the airlines do not dispute their tax bills, they are lobbying President Ashraf Ghani's government for more flexibility from both the tax authority as well as regulators so as to avoid a total collapse of the sector. The ACAA has responded that as the loosening of regulatory enforcement is not an option, airlines should therefore consider mergers in order to survive.
Airline executives have also lamented Kabul's decision to enter into an Open Skies agreement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2013 which has given carriers such as Emirates (EK, Dubai International) and flydubai (FZ, Dubai International) to dominate the market with over 70% of the market's total weekly capacity. Coupled with that, Afghan carriers have been banned from serving Europe since 2010 thus depriving them of another lucrative revenue stream.
Air travel is critical not only to Afghanistan's economy, but also to the local populace, most of whom use it to travel to regions that are unsafe to travel to by road given the current war with the Taliban.
