Blockade in the Air

SOUTH AFRICA

Twenty minutes from Niamey, Niger, approaching for a night landing, the pilot of the chartered South African Constellation received an unsettling message from the control tower: turn away or have the plane seized on the ground. With his fuel tanks almost empty, the pilot had to set down anyway, and the Connie, its crew and 79 passengers--most of them white South Africans returning from European holiday--were surrounded by black guards armed with rusty rifles. Not until 24 hours later was the flight allowed to resume, and local authorities warned that in the future intruding South African planes would be confiscated.

At last May's African "summit conference" in Addis Ababa, South Africa's neighbors called for an economic boycott, to include the banning of South African aircraft from airports and airspace. By last week an air curtain had closed African skies to South African Airways, whose proud symbol is a winged springbok, forcing its planes into a tortuous detour.

Until last month, S.A.A.'s Boeing 707 jets operated two efficient routes between Johannesburg and Europe--one along Africa's east fringe, via Nairobi, Kenya; the other almost due north via Brazzaville, in the once-French Congo. Trouble began when, implementing the Addis Ababa agreement, Egypt, Algeria, Ethiopia and Sudan barred South African aircraft from overflying their territories. S.A.A. rerouted all its flights over Libya. But then Libya also joined the air blockade. Fortnight ago S.A.A. inaugurated a carefully prepared, out-of-the-way alternate route around West Africa's bulge, via Brazzaville (which so far has not joined the ban), Luanda, capital of Portuguese Angola, and Las Palmas in the Spanish Canary Islands (see map). The "apartheid route" takes about 900 miles and two hours longer to Europe, costs an estimated $3,000 more to operate each way, so that S.A.A. may well be hard pressed to preserve its share of the lucrative European market as well as last year's handsome $1,500,000 profit.

As usual, South Africa's white regime took its latest humiliation in stolid stride. Following an agreement quietly signed last May with Portugal, its like-minded ally, South Africa is putting up $5,300,000 to help construct a jet airport on the Cape Verde island of Sal as an additional refueling stop. South African Minister of Transport Ben Schoeman assured everyone that the island-hopping detour is every bit as safe as the old routes. "We are flying and will keep flying," he vowed. The airline has already launched an advertising campaign extolling the scenic charms of such offbeat places as Luanda and Las Palmas, and a Cape Town columnist eloquently extolled the uses of adversity. "Boycotts have turned us into smarter salesmen," the pundit wrote. "Arms embargoes have forced us to make our own weapons, and the air ban has sent a patriotic thrill running down the South African Airways fuselage."

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