© Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2006
Taken
from the Magazine
section in
www.onestopenglish.com
Ariana today. Its safety record is very bad and this means Ariana planes
cannot fly to most European and American airports. United Nations officials
and foreign diplomats never take Ariana flights. Many of Ariana’s 1,700 staff
are corrupt, Atash says.
Is Ariana the world's worst airline? Possibly. There are many bad airlines in
the developing world. "Ariana is not worse than many other airlines," says
David Learmount at
Flight International magazine. "If a country has no safety
culture, its airline will have no safety culture." But Ariana is better than many
other bad airlines in one way – it has a business plan. Atash, an Afghan-
American, returned three years ago from the USA where he had a business.
He started work as the manager of Ariana in June.
It is not an easy job. His pay is only $100 a month and he has to use his own
mobile phone. But he wants to change things. His assistant is Hanns
Marienfeld, one of a team of six people from the German national airline
Lufthansa, which are helping to improve Ariana. "When
we arrived one year
ago, Ariana was not up to international standards," he says. "It had no flight
schedule. Customers had to pay a bribe to get a ticket, a second bribe to get
a boarding pass and sometimes a third to get a seat in business class. We
only flew when the pilots wanted to fly." Safety standards were not good. In
2003 and 2004 Ariana's six planes had six major engine failures. "In Germany
our pilots only see engine failures in a flight simulator. In Ariana we do it in
real life," says Marienfeld.
Ariana was founded in 1955 as a small regional airline. It flew hippies and
adventurers
to Kabul from London, Paris and Frankfurt and brought young
couples from Pakistan. But in 1978, a civil war began. The visitors stopped
coming and Ariana, like the rest of Afghanistan, had terrible problems.
In 1979, the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan. The roads were very
dangerous then and Ariana was the safest way to travel. But flying was still
very dangerous. The Afghan fighters who were fighting against the Soviet
army had American anti-aircraft missiles. Sometimes they fired their missiles
at planes. Some pilots wanted to leave. On a flight to Kandahar in 1989 the
pilot and the co-pilot began to fight. The pilot wanted to fly the plane to Iran.
The co-pilot did not want to go. While they were fighting,
the plane fell out of
the sky and crashed into the desert near the Iranian border. Everyone on the
plane died.
The Soviet army left in 1989 but the airline’s problems became even worse.
The Taliban took control of Kabul a year later and brought their 7
th
century
ideas to Ariana's 20th-century business. They sent the stewardesses home,
stopped the playing of music in planes, and gave the job of director to a 26-
year-old religious fanatic.
© Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2006
Taken from the Magazine
section in
www.onestopenglish.com
The United Nations imposed sanctions on the Taliban and this meant that
Ariana could not fly to other countries. Its planes got older and older and its
image became worse and worse. The former prime minister died in a 1997
crash; two accidents in 1998 killed about 100 people.
In 2001, the US and other countries occupied Afghanistan.
Many people
thought this was a good thing for Ariana but US planes bombed Ariana’s
planes and destroyed six of its eight planes. The Taliban stole $500,000 in
cash from Ariana and ran away.
Now things are changing. The number of flights has increased from 10 to 15 a
week. Ariana management says 85% of flights are on time. Ariana made a
$1m profit last year. At Kabul airport the mechanics have new tools and the
company is training new pilots. It is also opening a modern sales centre, with
young, enthusiastic staff and a computerised booking system.
Now Atash plans to ask half his 1,700 staff to stay at home but he will
continue to pay them. "We are building the system with completely new
people. We cannot mix them with the corrupt old employees." he says. There
is
no guarantee of success, however, and there is now a battle to control the
company. "We're going to fight," Atash promises. "Because the only other
possibility is to sit here and do nothing. And that's not good - either for Ariana
or for Afghanistan."
