Chinedu Eze
Nigerian airlines have said that most of the operators may end schedule flight services this year, unless government takes urgent steps to resolve lingering issues that have hampered their operations.
THISDAY checks at the domestic airside of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos on Wednesday revealed that many aircraft owned by domestic carriers are not in service because those due for maintenance have not been ferried overseas owing to forex challenges, inadequate supply of aviation fuel and poor passenger traffic due to high cost of air fares.
Airline operators that spoke to THISDAY identified six critical factors that government could resolve to restore domestic airline service in Nigeria, which started dwindling in the past three years. They disclosed that the airlines are already losing their pilots due to the difficulty in operating in the country.
The airlines said the high charges paid to the aviation agencies when added to the high cost of aviation and the fact that airlines operate maximum of 11 hours every day due to absence of landing aids, including airfield lighting makes it inevitable that every airline on domestic service is losing money and may not be able to continue by the middle of this year unless government takes a decision to resolve these issues.
The operators pointed out that international airlines have eroded the domestic market with the multiple entry point given them by the federal government and insecurity at the airports, which has made unruly passengers to beat up airline staff and destroy their equipment when there is infraction that may not have been caused by the airlines.
Chairman of Air Peace, Chief Allen Onyema, confirmed that airlines lost huge resources, running into billions of Naira last December due to the Harmattan haze, which forced them to cancel their flights with zero flights on December 27 and 28, 2016, noting that with modern landing aids aircraft could have landed at low visibility occasioned by the Harmattan.
He noted that aviation fuel has constituted 85 percent of operational cost because of its increasingly rising cost and urged government to urgently intervene through local refining to make the product available at affordable prices, adding that whatever money that remained for the airlines after buying fuel they use it to pay for charges to the aviation agencies.
“Airlines must be supported for them to continue to operate. The federal government should declare emergency in the industry by removing every form of tax to the airlines for a given period of time. Government can ask the agencies to collect N1000 flat rates. Because of the difficulty in operating in Nigeria, the domestic airlines are losing their pilots even to the airlines operating in neighbouring countries. We are not asking for money from government; we are asking for enabling operating environment. We want to have airfield lighting at the airports so that we can land from 6:00 pm; we have to have aviation fuel at affordable rates. It is only in Nigeria that the product is costly,” Onyema said.
Onyema noted that it is only Nigeria that allows foreign airlines to operate to three airports, operating from one city to another, instead of picking passengers from one airport and flying out of the country, but in Nigeria “ they can fly to Lagos and from Lagos they carry passengers to Port Harcourt and back to Lagos before they leave the country and this involves more than one foreign airline.”
On his part, the Chairman of Air Peace and also the Chairman of Arik Air, Joseph Arumemi-Ikhide also condemned the multi entry point given to foreign airlines by government for free, noting that this undermines the operations of domestic carriers because it erodes their market.
Arumemi-Ikhide said the product should be made available and at good price like petrol, “Aviation is an engine for economic growth, it is not elitist as thought by some people and I know that PMS (petrol) affects everybody, for convenience of driving, movement within the country but the economic drivers of the nation need Jet A1 to move around from one place to the other. I don’t think it is appropriate to think that Jet A1 is meant for the elite; no, it is not.”
