ONYEMA: NIGERIA HAS IMPROVED SIGNIFICANTLY IN AIR SAFETY
people; these have been with me since I was growing up.
How do you intend to maximise the airplanes? When we went to Kano one man said that nine buses leave Kano to Enugu every night; that if you can operate Kano to Enugu, it will be very, very profitable and you will be helping a lot of people. With this your new subsidiary, Air Peace Hopper, are you envisaging operating from Kano to Enugu and connecting other destinations that may not have been part of the domestic market before?
The idea behind the subsidiary, Air Peace Hopper is to interconnect Nigerian cities. Personally I want every part of this country to be developed, no matter the geographical location. This is a beautiful country of 180 million people, of over 378 ethnic nationalities. We have not even realised half of our potential, if only we know the potential in this country we will be celebrating every morning. So I want to use Air Peace to interconnect Nigerian cities. That is why we created this subsidiary Air Peace Hopper.
The Boeing B737 jets are too big to do this interconnectivity. Some big airlines all over the world have their subsidiaries. British Airways has Com Air they are using in Denmark; Delta Airlines has Delta Connection, using the same kind of jet we are using. United Airlines owns United Shuttle, American Airlines owns American Eagle. So I studied the American landscape and I decided to adopt it. We have been planning to connect Enugu and Kano, Port Harcourt and Kano, Kano and Yola, Lagos and Markurdi. We want to be able to take people from here to Taraba, Gombe, Markurdi to Kano or Kano to Markudi.
We want to connect Benin and other cities, Warri to Port Harcourt Air Force Base. We want to fly from Calabar to the north directly. I want to be able to do two flights a week from Calabar to the northernmost part of the country. We are going to open up this country
So we are going to do Enugu-Kano and KanoEnugu, Lagos- Markudi, Lagos-Taraba, Lagos-Jos, Lagos – Yola, Lagos – Kaduna, Kaduna- Yola and Yola – Kaduna. We are going to do from Owerri- Kano and Kano to Owerri. So by the time Air Peace helps to energise this intercity connection, it is going to boost the economy of this country. Look at what we did with Akure. May God bless the Governor of Ondo state, Rotimi Akeredolu. This man humbled himself, pleaded with us to come to his state to open up his state.
He meant well for his people. We went into Akure because I saw a Governor who is determined to develop his place. He pleaded, he came himself, did everything possible and we went in there in order to help another Nigerian state. We started Akure, as a huge lose to this airline but in order to propel the people of Ondo state and propel other Nigerians to see what they have, we offered them fair of N10,000 only. N10, 000 per passenger cannot even pay all the 37 charges we pay to government agencies, but we did it. If you go there today Chinese people are going to Akure, they are visiting Ondo State to know what they can offer. We have helped in boosting the economy of Ondo State by doing that.
The Governor even called me few days ago. We started that route with Boeing B737, we are not supposed to be doing it with Boeing but we wanted to do it. Because he was determined to get his state developed, we supported him. It is rare seeing a politician like that. So I am not that myopic, my broad mindedness is the secret behind Air Peace. So we went into Ondo and today the place is developed. The Governor called the other day and said, I learnt that your Embraer jets have come and I said yes, two of them have come remaining four. He said when are you going to bring them in, we need them, so that you can cut your cost. He was feeling for me. So, with the Air Peace Hopper, Nigerians will see something that has never happened in this country before. When we came in many experienced people in the industry were sceptical that we may not be able to pull through. But we have proved them wrong; that with the right focus and dedication, the right fleeting, you can get it right. Another thing is your type of fleeting, you just don’t go buy aircraft for buying sake, the fleeting matters and that is what we have done now.
When are you putting the Embraer jets into service?
We shall put them very soon. We are waiting for NCAA to give us a go ahead. We are going to do demo flight for NCAA, just like we did with the Dornier.
How is your regional operation going to be?
You know we are expanding into the region, so we started the regional operations since early 2017, we started with Ghana and on February 19, 2018 we started the other parts of West Coast; that is Dakar, Banjul and Free Town. And after that we hit Lome, Abidjan and Liberia. We will use the Air Peace Hopper to connect to cities in the sub-region that are close to one another. At least when you carry 40 people you can break even. So in some cases we will put the Boeing B737 and we are going to increase our flight operations into some cities with the hopper.
So, besides connecting underserved cities in Nigeria, we are also going to serve even the served ones better using the hopper in certain times of the day. So all those underserved places in Nigeria like Minna, Jigawa, Gombe, Bauchi, Sokoto, Kano, Yola, Maiduguri are going to experience more flights. We are already here and the planes have started arriving and in the next three weeks we will start connecting Nigeria. So it is not about running to do international and running to do regional, within the country there are a lot of gaps.
When you want to operate international destination, which destination will be your first choice?
The federal government has given us the right to fly into London but we are yet to apply to the London authorities because NCAA said we should wait first. Air Peace is prepared. We have the equipment. Two of our Boeing B777 came from Emirates with all its luxury. So I don’t see the reason why we cannot do well on international scene. And again we are not rushing into anything. The same way Air Peace has been doing its thing, studying things and taking our time. Dubai has given us their approval, so we are going to start Dubai first followed by China and then London.
There are indications that many international airlines do not want Nigerian airlines to operate into their countries. This is because they see Nigeria as a market they record huge load factor. So if indigenous airlines begin to fly their destinations, they will lose that market. One of our cabin crew was traveling the other day n Emirates flight and she told the Emirates cabin crew that she is a cabin crew too. And she asked which airline? She responded by saying Air Peace. The lady said, you people are coming to Dubai; we are going to run you out. We are waiting for you. We even increased our flight because of you. We will run you out and you will not last 30 days.
That was what she told my staff. Competition is really tough; even in Dubai a lot of the airlines have been trying to scare us. But nobody is going to run us out on the route. We are going to succeed because we are not going to go into any place unprepared. We are going to have a healthy competition with whomever; it is going to be healthy. So we are not scared of competition what we ask for is a level playing field, especially from our government. We should look at what those countries are doing for their own airlines and allow us to get on the same level. Multiple frequencies given to them into our country will not help us because they try to regulate us one way or the other from coming into their own country.
How will Nigerian airlines make the federal government understand the challenges they are facing flying into other countries in Africa, especially as the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) has liberalised flight movement from one country to another in the region?
Let me tell you something. Aviation policies over the years seem to create the feelings that we are fighting our own airlines in this country. If we are very, very sincere about making Nigerian airlines come out of the doldrums, there are so many things we have to do. This Single Africa Air Transport Market or Open Skies, when the airlines in Nigeria said it does not favour us; not because we cannot compete and it is not true that Nigerian airlines are sick. If any other airline is sick, Air Peace is not sick, Nigerian airlines are not sick. We are not indebted to anybody because every airline must borrow money; the most important thing is how you are servicing your loan. We are servicing our loans accurately and adequately to the satisfaction of our bank. So not every airlines are sick. I disagree that all Nigerian airlines are sick; that they are unhealthy and badly run; no. We have a structure in Air Peace and it is run according to the best known universal practices. So when we cry that this SAATM does not favour us, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) might say otherwise, but SAATM does not really favour us at this stage, except a level playing field is created. What we are demanding is not peculiar. When Emirates was ravaging America the airlines in America cried
But 23 countries have agreed to adopt the treaty and they will open their airspace and fully implement it?
No country gives blanket approval for whatever treaty they signed, no country does that. So SAATM does not favour Nigerian airlines as it stands today. Have the authorities bothered to find out the landing charges these other countries in Africa give to Nigerian airlines that are coming into their countries? Look at Abidjan (Cote de Ivoire), have they bothered to find out what their countries do for them in terms of charges? They are not paying the same charges as we do. In Ghana, AWA (African World Airlines) is not paying the same charges in their country as we do. So they can afford to crash their fares. We cannot afford to do so because when we get into their country they over charge us.
Why have we not started operation to Abidjan? Because they gave us something out of this world. They charged us $6000, to $7000 per landing. How many people are you carrying to justify paying such exorbitant charges? But when they come to Nigeria they pay peanuts. So why won’t they run out the Nigerian airlines? This is what we are saying. Air Peace is the biggest airline in West Africa for now. Asky is not bigger than Air Peace; Air Cote d’voire is not bigger than Air Peace. There is no airline in West Africa that is bigger than Air Peace. But we cannot compete even with those smaller airlines.What we are saying is that the area they will run us out of the market is on charges because they don’t pay the same charges as we do. We are over taxed here in Nigeria. For every passenger you bring into Cote d’lvoire you are paying about $100s or more than that. The total charges for a Nigerian airline in that country is about $7000. The aircraft is not even carrying up to $3000 so how can you succeed? That is why I have not started my Cote d’Ivoire route. And even the other ones like Senegal is the same thing.
So what our government can do for us is to call these other countries and urge them to streamline the charges first before they will allow full implementation of SAATM. I am not against SAATM, Air Peace is not against the Single African Market but it has to be streamlined to benefit everyone, so that we will not have a parasitic union with these African countries. It has to be symbiotic. Ethiopia for instance, does any airline in Nigeria go to Ethiopia? They don’t have anything to offer us, so they should regulate the number of times they come into our country and tell them if you want to do more key in with other Nigeria airlines.
In South Africa this is the way it is done, it is done like that in other countries. So why is our own different? Why are we killing our own industry? We need to provide jobs for Nigerians. The monies these airlines cart out of this country they use it to develop their own; while our people are left on the streets. There are many Nigerians who can invest in airport infrastructure; Bi-Courtney has proved that by setting up and employing Nigerians. When we invite foreigners to come and invest in certain sections of the economy, we have to look at what they will repatriate from the economy at the end of the day. And they usually come with certain conditions, so we have to be careful about SAATM.