Without getting on the case of the state of the Bamenda airport which received its first Camair-co flight yesterday, let me create some precedent as to why I will never be caught dead on a Camair-co flight.
Sometime in 2015, I was on a business trip in Douala to pick up some work materials .I rented a truck to transport the materials to Yaoundé and decided to ride with the truck driver. Just about 45 minutes on our way out of Douala, the truck had a breakdown. What had happened was, on a previous trip, the driver had encountered problems with the vehicle's clutch. The clutch was irresponsive because a piston in the clutch mechanism was worn out and unable to apply the necessary pressure (I’m really poor at describing mechanical issues). Anyway, that previous trip , the driver had managed to twist some plastic wrap into the socket into which the piston rests as a temporal fix but after completing the journey on that temporary fix, he figured there was no longer a need to visit the garage to have the part replaced.
In a separate incident, I was traveling from the village to Bamenda and had a similar experience. As we were taking off, the driver was confidently talking about how the vehicle was giving him some trouble the previous day but seemed to have adjusted/fixed itself by itself. When I tried to explain to him it makes no sense that a vehicle will fix itself like the human body sometimes can; he hit me with the usual “you no know ma moto pass me.”
O.K
I am no god but an hour into the journey, the vehicle broke down after behaving like he had explained it was doing the previous day. At this point, the driver was now begging me to be of help instead of asking him “no you be sey moto dan fix eself?”
Higher up-
That was to say we all know our people and their penchant for cutting corners in everything. Couple that with financial mismanagement which is a norm and you can conclude Camair- co is a disaster we are all denying is happening. The thought of someone embezzling funds for replacement parts and buying old parts from decommissioned planes to carry out repairs is not as far as a hundred meters fetched.
Sister company Camrail already proved to us that top positions in those companies are manned by people with dwarfed reasoning capacities or just general disregard for caution and humanity, something which from the aforementioned experiences I have had, we can safely assume has trickled down into the entire population. In a country where meritocracy is benched when it comes to hiring talent, what human in their right mind can trust an Airline company.
I know of Camair-Co flights that have been delayed for up to two weeks. I'm talking of a flight between Douala and Yaoundé. I still don't understand why the government is clinging on to that deadweight of an airline company.
Take a look at the Douala airport which has apparently been renovated. 40 something miles of road between Bamenda and Dschang remains in a horrible state and what they can think of is fly a cargo plane to Bamenda?
Any-ha!
If you die on a Camair-co flight, it is your fault.
We need to change our reactionary attitude and adopt a more proactive approach to doing things. Bamenda has been asking for flights for ever and they react after turning the airport into a military camp?
First things first- Build a new airport. That will be a better indicator that you want to make a turn in the right direction.
A country where a little boy cannot access the airport just to touch a plane and see what it looks like. They have people locked outside the airport like it is a diamond factory -what disrespect.