New flights and high speed train for Morocco

Jet4You launches new Morocco-Belgium routes

The low-cost airline "Jet4You" will service three new weekly flights linking the Belgian airports of Charleroi and Liege to Casablanca as of November 1. The company will also launch Casablanca-Paris route on Oct. 29t. According to a press release from the company, these flights will be serviced on a 173-seat 737-400 Boeing.

The initiative is part of the company's strategy to cover other European countries in a bid to reach 1.5 million passengers by 2010. The company, which kicked off its activities in Morocco on February 26, has a euro 5.5Mn capital owned at 40% by tourism word leader and 5th European carrier TIU group, and at 60% by Moroccan shareholders.

The British low cost airliner, Easyjet, has also announced the opening of a new route between Madrid and Casablanca starting February 2007.

The British company said this new route is part of a project to launch six new lines from the Spanish capital to other cities in Spain, France, Italy and Morocco.

Morocco plans Arab world’s first high-speed train

Work on the Arab world’s first high-speed train -- stretching from the Mediterranean to the door of the Sahara desert -- could begin next year. The trains would travel at up to 300 kilometres (186 miles) per hour, slashing times from Tangier in the north via Marrakesh to Agadir in the south, and from Casablanca on the Atlantic to Oujda on the Algerian border.

“Marrakesh to Tangier in two and a half hours -- it’s as if the country’s shrinking,” rail operator ONCF’s managing director Mohamed Rabie Khlie said in an interview.

“A high-speed rail network will put us in the rail industry’s big league.”

If the plans are approved, the 1,500 kilometres of track may take until 2030 to complete at a cost of around 25 billion dirhams ($2.87 billion), Khlie said.

Improving transport links from the centre of the kingdom to long-neglected outlying regions is an important part of the government’s attempt to stimulate the economy and reduce unemployment and poverty.

A better rail network would also relieve congestion on Morocco’s roads, where around 10 people die every day in accidents.

Once financing for the new lines is sealed, engineering work could begin in the second half of 2007, Khlie said.

Journeys from Casablanca to Marrakesh could be cut to 1 hour and 20 minutes from over three hours, and from the capital Rabat to Tangier to 1 hour and 30 minutes from 4 hours and 30 minutes.

And Khlie said plans mooted years ago for a tunnel from Europe to Africa across the strait of Gibraltar were still on course, meaning trains may one day travel direct from Madrid to Marrakesh.

“A Moroccan-Spanish committee is working very hard on this issue and it’s going very well,” he said. “We feel quite a clear willingness on the Spanish side to push things forward.”

According to media reports earlier this year, the United Arab Emirates is studying the feasibility of a high-speed rail line between its airports in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

But Khlie said ONCF was the only train company in the Arab world with the financial health and technical capabilities needed to launch a high-speed rail project.

After years of restructuring with the help of loans from the World Bank, European Investment Bank and foreign governments, ONCF began turning a consolidated profit from 2004, giving it the financial muscle to embark on a broad expansion.

It plans to invest 15.5 billion dirhams in the 2005-09 period, as much as was spent in the previous 25 years, to expand and improve a cumbersome infrastructure, parts of which have changed little since the days of the French protectorate.

ONCF will acquire the status of a company next year, with a 50-year concession to operate the existing national network.

Under plans to liberalise the rail sector, private companies could be contracted to build and operate future rail lines that would link up with ONCF’s network, Khlie said.

But he played down the idea that the government may split ONCF’s infrastructure and operations activities, an option chosen by some European rail firms, or even privatise it.

“Nothing stops ONCF being brought to the stock market as long as the state keeps overall control,” he said. “The priority today is not any privatisation but to develop the network.”

Tags: Morocco Fes, Maghreb news