Air Burkina
Air Burkina SA is the national airline of Burkina Faso, operating scheduled services to one domestic destination, Bobo-Dioulasso, as well as regional services to Togo, Benin, Mali, Niger, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal and Ghana. It is majority owned by an AKFED/IPS consortium, and operates from its main base at Ouagadougou Airport.
History
The airline was established on 17 March 1967 under the name Air Volta. It was originally part owned by the Burkinabé government, part by Air France and part privately held. After the demise of Air Afrique, the state of Burkina Faso privatised Air Burkina on 21 February 2001, transferring 56% of the shares to the AKFED/IPS consortium (part of the Aga Khan Development Network).
It purchased its first aircraft, an Embraer EMB-110 Bandeirante, in 1978, and added a second, a Fokker F28, in 1983. The airline has had serious debt problems, reaching a deficit of one billion CFA francs in 1992 (approx. €1,500,000). However, by the time of privatization in 2001, the debt had largely been alleviated and the company was predicting an annual revenue of around 3.5 billion CFA francs (more than €5,000,000). The company saw a general strike in 2002, when workers demanded a 25% wage increase. In the resulting conflict, the director-general of Air Burkina was forced to resign.
