Open Sky: African Countries Frustrate Nigerian Airlines
Domestic airlines have accused some African countries of strategically blocking them from flying to their countries while their airlines take advantage of the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) to operate into Nigeria.
Executive Chairman, Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), Captain Nogie Meggison said that every African country targets the high passenger traffic in Nigeria while at the same time protecting their airlines and using stringent policies to block Nigerian carriers from operating to their own countries despite the open sky policy for Africa.
Speaking in the same the Chairman and CEO of Air Peace, Allen Onyema said that airline operators opposed the signing of the treaty by the Nigerian government because they knew that it would be detrimental to the nation’s airlines as other African states would not be willing to operate uniform charges for all regional carriers.
Onyema said unfortunately Nigeria does not adopt the principle of reciprocity by also introducing outrageous charges to discourage airlines from these countries to Nigeria.
“Rather, the federal gov- ernment through its aviation agencies operates liberalised bilateral policies that make some African airlines to fly to many airports in the country without any Nigerian carrier flying to theirs,” he said.
“Some people make it seem as if SAATM is the best thing that has happened to this country. This is a lie. The truth is that the other countries in Africa are the ones gaining from SAATM; not necessarily Nigerian airlines. The population of most countries is relatively small; Nigeria is a country of almost 200 million people. Some of these countries are about five million people or less with very tiny air passenger traffic. It is not only that Nigeria has the largest population in Africa but also the highest travelling public.
“So when SAATM was introduced Nigeria embraced it without looking at its implications for its own airlines. They said if Nigeria does not sign the treaty her airlines would not be travelling to other African countries but that is not true because with bilateral air service agreement we can fly to any country in the continent,” Onyema added.
The Air Peace boss observed that some African airlines want to be coming to Nigeria and if possible operate domestic service in the country by taking advantage of SAATM to reap
from Nigeria’s high passenger traffic.
“So in practice SAATM works for these other airlines but not for Nigerian airlines because they want to airlift passengers from Nigeria. But these countries don’t want us to come to their own countries and airlift passengers from there and they are being protected by their government which introduces stringent measures to stop Nigerian airlines from flying to those countries. But I support the position of their government. This is because they are supporting their airlines. “If you want to protect Nigerian airlines, government should play the aero politics on our behalf. Senegal for two and half years has not responded to our letters requesting to fly to that country, even for once. They refused to attend to us because they are trying to float their own airline. So they are trying to protect what they will still do in future.