United Nigeria Identifies Challenges, Prospects as Domestic Operator

Chinedu Eze

What has become traditional in Nigeria’s air transport industry is the optimism, which airlines have when they go into operations, but in few weeks after their inaugural flight, they are always awakened to the reality of operating schedule flights in Nigeria.

From policies to fuel cost, airport facilities, to charges and aircraft maintenance; the airline begins to reconcile itself to the challenges of doing business in Nigeria. Sometimes some of them survive for a long time, sometimes some of them give in like Discovery Airline, which lasted barely two years and Afrijet, which started flight service alongside Dana Air in 2008, but went under less than three years later.

However, United Nigeria Airlines that started flight operation on February 12, 2021 shortly after the COVID-19 lockdown, which paralysed flight service globally, seemed to be soldiering on.

The Chief Operating Officer of the airline, Osita Okonkwo, in a press conference on Monday in Lagos, said the new carrier has so much to look forward to as it has done very well in the domestic airline market.

“On the 12th of February 2021, we did our inaugural flight and it was a flight that took us from Lagos to Enugu. That happened a few days after we obtained our AOC (Air Operator Certificate). And that period was towards the peak period, COVID-19 was still very much around and the aviation sector has just reopened for business. It was like, would it happen, would it not happen. We did that on that day, so looking back two years after, it is like what a journey. But before the inaugural flight, we had actually started our process almost two years earlier. 

“We got our aircraft in 2019 and took them to Mexico for C-check.  We had our people sent to South Africa for training. We were caught up by COVID-19 lockdown. We had our crew staying in South Africa for almost eight months. Our aircraft was on ground for almost one year. So instead of coming back in November 2019, they came back November 2020. They spent almost one year in Mexico. We had two engineers out there. We had four aircraft out there; we had our pilots out in South Africa. So, it was like will this ever happen? We had actually started with a lot of difficulties. There were costs that we incurred without any plans for them. So it was tough but when we now came back, what also happened, maybe it was a blessing in disguise, because it gave us time to plan, to know ourselves, to review one or two things. And at the end of the day, we were able to start just a few days after we got our AOC and since then we have been flying. Everyday of the year we have flown,” Okonkwo said.

He said United Nigeria started with five destinations, but now operate to nine destinations, a situation he described as a journey with invaluable experience garnered in the last two years that would propel to farther the journey, look ahead with attendant expansion plans.

“For us, it is the beginning. Lessons have been learnt, and what we have done is to build in some of these lessons into our plans for the future. The space we are in is the one that is, first difficult, second it is very competitive, third very uncertain and whether you are talking of ground operations and facilities, whether you are talking of aviation fuel, access to foreign exchange, the ability of lessors and manufacturers and sellers to do business with Nigeria. All these things come together to make the industry challenging. 

“That is one. The second one is that we are actually pleasantly surprised by the reaction of the traveling public when we came on board. We were very warmly received, and not just like an addition but also like a partner that has come to make things differently or to add to the service delivered. This industry is a service delivery industry; it is about making customers happy irrespective of what happens in the back office. The front office is what people see, you come to the checking counter, you get checked in, you go to the departure and move into the aircraft and you fly to your destination. That is all the passengers care about,” he further said.

The COO remarked that whether you are having tech (technical issues) or break down system, passengers don’t care about that; what passengers want is to be satisfied and the airline has striven to look at issues from passengers’ perspective; to always have it at the back of the mind that the crux of the matter is to satisfy the passenger.

“So, what we are saying is that we try to see it from the passengers’ perspective. Somebody wants to travel and has decided to travel with you or through you, so you have to go out of your way to make it happen. To make the flight experience possible, to make it pleasurable, to make it safe and that is one thing that we try to do, it is one thing that keeps us sleepless every night, every day, we continue to work hard. We know that there are areas of improvement. In United Nigeria, we claim to be a learning organization, an organisation that is never satisfied with what it has done. We see areas of improvement in everything we do, so consistently and continually try to make a difference or to make some improvement,” Okonkwo said.

He also stated that the airline has good relationship with the regulatory agency, the Nigerian Civil Aviation authority (NCAA), the Nigeria airspace Management Agency (NAMA), the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and the Ministry of Aviation and others.

“All the agencies have been very supportive. We work hard to ensure that that good relationship is maintained by doing the right thing to meet their expectation,” he said.