Countries often hold up their state-run businesses as symbols of national pride and accomplishment. But in the case of Royal Air Cambodge, officials are more apt to label the struggling enterprise a national embarrassment.
This sentiment was clear earlier this month when fuel from an RAC jet spewed across Pochentong’s runway moments before it was to take King Norodom Sihanouk to China.
Now, officials say, change is on the way. Sok An, minister of the Council of Ministers and temporary chairman of the airline, said Monday it is time to make RAC more professional and more profitable.
“The government is trying to make this company better than it was before,” Sok An said, returning from state visits to the Philippines and Brunei with Prime Minister Hun Sen. “We need experience from big companies and human resources to make this improvement.”
He did not detail any of the coming changes, but said they would be aimed at making RAC more competitive.
“Until today, [RAC] has not been strong and has not profited,” he said, just after disembarking from a China Southern Airlines jet, which carried him and Hun Sen back from abroad. “Some companies profit, and some lose.”
RAC has, in fact, lost at least $25 million in recent years, according to airline executives.
Sok An said the Cambodian delegation rented the China Southern plane because of recent technical troubles at RAC and because the trip took them on an overseas route, which required a strong plane and pilots experienced in flying the area.
With a fleet of only three planes, RAC has experienced periodic spates of cancellations when planes have broken down. Last week, a takeoff was aborted because of a technical problem with a plane’s thermometer.
Hun Sen has persistently lambasted RAC since 1996, in the days when RAC still enjoyed a monopoly on domestic flights. Over the years, his criticisms have only become more acidic. “If RAC dies, I don’t care….It is not my mother. So if any good company wants to take it over, I would allow it,” the premier said in May.
Hun Sen fired RAC’s two top officials immediately after the Aug 1 incident with the King’s plane.
RAC’s customers say they too are also losing faith in the airline.
“I feel scared and hardly dare to get on an RAC plane, as they have recently had technical and mechanical problems,” said Chan Sareth as he boarded an RAC plane on Monday.
But some people say some of the flack RAC receives is undeserved, or at least exaggerated.
Veng Sereyvuth, Cambodia’s Minister of Tourism, said Monday that people react more strongly to the troubles at RAC because it bruises their national pride. “It’s normal to have a bit of high expectation, because it is the national airline,” he said.
Other airlines using Pochentong airport also have cancellations, but they are rarely publicized, former RAC chairman Pan Chantra maintained in May.
On Sunday, a Thai airways flight to Bangkok was delayed three to four hours when a moving stairway hit the door of the plane, causing slight damage.
Ang Kim Eang of Apsara Tours travel agency said RAC’s service fares well in comparison to Cambodia’s other domestic carriers, Phnom Penh Airways and President Airlines. She also said it is unfair to compare RAC to larger carriers like Thai Airways or Malaysia Airlines.
Meng Pholla, managing director of PI Travel, said his agency has not referred its customers to RAC for the past two years because of the airline’s frequent cancellations.
But he said he is curious to see whether RAC will improve.
“We are waiting to see what will happen with RAC. If they become a better operation, we will use them,” Meng Pholla said. “But as they are now, we cannot.”
