Casablanca hosts meeting on plane engines overhaul in Africa

The 11th annual conference on planes engine overhaul opened in Casablanca Monday with 200 international experts attending.

The conference, sponsored by the British African Aviation Magazine, studies means for Africa to face up increasingly-harsh competition in aviation-related realms.

Moroccan transport and merchant navy minister, Abdeslam Znined, deplored in an opening address that Africa accounts only of 4 percent of international air traffic and that the continent's aeronautics industry is still short of Africans' ambitions.

The conference is an opportunity to make a showcase of the Moroccan carrier, Royal Air Maroc (RAM) experience in matters of engine maintenance.

The carrier set up in 1999 the SNECMA Morocco Engine Service, a firm that gained a world reputation as evidenced by the engine overhaul contracts it won in Europe and America, RAM President and Managing Director, Mohamed Berrada, told the meeting.

This is the second conference of the kind that Casablanca hosts after that of 1993.