FX, aviation fuel, facilities put noose on Nigeria’s air travel business
ACOMBINATION OF TOUGH ISSUES, IN CLUDING HIGH NAI RA EXCHANGE RATE, THE SCARCITY OF DOLLARS, HIGH COST OF AVIA TION FUEL and deplorable facilities, is putting a serious strain and hanging like a noose around the neck of airlines and air travel business in Nigeria, says an emerging serious player in the industry.
The threat that these issues pose to airlines and air travel business is leading operators to project potential calamity for the industry. But the threat notwithstanding, it would seem that the prestige is alluring enough to attract interests not with the recent issuance of airline operating certificates (AOCs) and a few more believed to still be in the pipeline waiting to be issued.
But smarting from completing a full year of flying in the skies of Nigeria in the aviation business, Obiora Okonkwo, chairman, United Nigeria Airline, wants the government to urgently intervene to stem these issues because they drain the meagre operating revenues of airlines.
Okonkwo said high cost of aviation fuel, rising exchange rate, deplorable facilities, such as ‘Sun Set airports’, where airlines have to plan within the time of operations of the airports, among others are issues that need to be given a serious look in by the authorities.
His United Nigeria Airline has just completed a full year of operating in these conditions and said the airline struggled amidst the challenging environment to airlift and satisfy its customers during the period, but that it will not jeopardise safety amidst the odds.
In specific, the industry continues to see the cost of aviation fuel rise in Africa’s largest economy, which has one of the highest daily production of crude oil in the world, but has to import its fuel needs, including Jet A1, the fuel used by planes, because its refineries are in shambles. And Okonkwo is raising concern over the increasing cost of Jet-A1 with a litre of the commodity, which was sold for N190 in February 2021 when the airline started operations, but has risen to N400 in one year.
Passengers may need to be concerned given that the United Nigeria Airline huncho said if the government did not intervene, it could lead airlines to increase fares soon.
“The cost of aviation is increasing at an alarming rate, when we started operations in February 2021 we used to buy a litre for N190 and ticket was sold for N23,000 but it is now sold for N400 a litre and ticket fares [are] not commensurate with what obtains in the market. We are all in this same issue because we buy fuel from the same market.
“The issue of forex is not abating, rather it is getting worse, the rate is now between N450 and N570, depending on where you get it, but staff salaries are being paid, training is not stopped; yet aviation is a chain, a whole lot is taken into consideration. We need a lot of support from the government to keep the airlines going and keep our passengers,” he said.
Speaking on night operations, Okonkwo lamented that 80 percent of Nigerian airports are on Sunset regime, adding that this alone cost the airlines huge sum as they park their aircraft when they are supposed to be flying.
“This also causes delays and cancellations because it puts a lot more pressure on the operators. We have to schedule our operations within a particular time when the airports close by 6 p.m. The passengers are also affected. This is an urgent call to the government that the aviation sector is a great contributor to the economy and needs urgent attention.
“We should be talking about 50 million annual domestic traffic next year and not nine million out of the over 200 million population of Nigeria,” Okonkwo said.
He said his airline was open to interline/codeshare agreement, advising that local operators should work together to achieve this goal in order to ameliorate passengers’ ordeal in time delays and cancellations.
Speaking further on the activities of United Nigeria Airline, he said it airlifted 26,000 passengers in one year and now has five aircraft in operations.
“We have also enjoyed a very productive year of client relationships. During the period, we have united over 260,000 passengers with their destinations peacefully, comfortably and safely operating 40 daily flights. That represents 75 percent of our total capacity. We took off in February reaching Lagos, Abuja, Enugu and Asaba after demo flights in January 2021.
“It has been a year that has seen a whole lot of challenges, no doubt. But beyond all those, we have seen great achievements in our strategic plan, our expansion plan, our growth plan. We had opened new locations. We have also increased our fleet from an initial 4 Embraer 145 aircraft to include one Airbus A320. We have also worked as closely as possible with the regulatory agencies: Ministry of Aviation, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), which has been working so hard, FAAN, NAMA etc, to sustain a very robust working relationship. We are very happy and proud of their efforts to strengthen and improve things in the aviation industry,” he added.