Why Aviation Sector Needs Total Overhaul

Industry stakeholders have identified protracted challenges hindering the growth of the aviation industry and have proffered ways on how to revamp the sector, writes Chinedu Eze

On Tuesday this week, major aviation stakeholders, including operators, administrators, pilots, engineers, security and financial experts, met in Lagos to set agenda for the President Bola Tinubu’s administration, on how best to propel the industry.

The stakeholders called for support of Nigerian airlines, review of policies that guide activities in the industry and the autonomy of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), in order to free it from the control of the Minister of Aviation.

The stakeholders who spoke during the second quarter Brunch Business Meeting (BBM) of the Aviation Safety Roundtable Initiative (ASRTI), brainstormed and pointed out ways the industry could be revamped and what government should do to ensure that aviation sector is viable and contributes significantly to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Key issues that arose included; how Nigerian airlines could be supported by the federal government to make them profitable operators and there were strong suggestions for merger for the domestic airlines to enjoy economy of scale; review of Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) to ensure that Nigerian airlines are made to participate effectively in international flight operations, which calls for review of lope-sided bilateral agreements that tend to sideline Nigerian carriers.

There were also issues about delays, what causes delays and how these factors could be curbed, especially VIP movement, inadequate infrastructure and bird strikes which damage aircraft engines and forces them out of the airspace.

Total Overhaul

Chairman of Kings Airlines Limited, Senator Musa Adede addressed the stakeholders and candidly told them that the aviation industry has continued to degenerate, especially under the two last Ministers of Aviation. He confirmed that NCAA may have lost its autonomy, as the Minister hob-knobbed and took many decisions, which the Director General ought to have taken, as industry sources say that there is so much interference of the Ministry in the affairs of NCAA, especially in the last Buhari administration.

THISDAY, however, learnt that the meddlesomeness never go to the area of safety, where NCAA in collaboration with the Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB) hold solid control over.

But Adede insisted that NCAA should regain its autonomy, as enshrined in the Civil Aviation Act of 2006 as amended. He decried a situation where the regulatory authority negated its powers and allowed the Minister to usurp it, noting that such has contributed to poor performance of the sector.  He therefore suggested total overhaul of the industry, starting with policies.

“I have been in the Senate since 1999 and I can tell you the last two ministers of aviation failed woefully,” Adede said.

 He emphasized that with his experience in the industry in the past 30 years, things have gone from bad to worse and called for comprehensive roadmap for the industry, “so that Nigeria can rejuvenate the aviation sector to contribute to GDP by focusing on aviation infrastructural development, safety enhancement, airline industry support, human capital development, sustainable aviation and stakeholders’ engagement.”

Merger

Former President of Aviation Round Table (ART), Dr. Gabriel Olowo who handed over to his successor during the meeting, delivered a speech on behalf of the group and pointed out that for Nigerian airlines to be able to compete with those foreign carriers that operate in the country, they need to build capacity and the easy way to do it is through merger. He lamented that Nigerian airlines were already fragmented and cannot do much while standing alone. He therefore insisted that merger remained inevitable.

“Nigerian airlines remain small and highly fragmented. Our 11airlines with a total fleet of 104 aircraft is less than that of Ethiopian Airlines (ET), which parades 144 aircraft in its fleet. Competing out there will be a herculean task without collaboration, cooperation and or merger. Merger was successful in banking and should be successful in aviation. The industry must learn not to dwell on fleet size but rather on share capital,” Olowo said.

Senator Abebe also observed that there is no synergy or unity among Nigerian carriers, noting that without their working together there is no hope for them in future.

Challenges of Airlines

Chairman and CEO of Air Peace, Allen Onyema, said that airline operation in Nigeria is beset with many challenges and explained why domestic carriers record a lot of delays. He attributed it to many factors, which include weather, airport infrastructure, VIP movement and bird strike. 

“Airlines in Nigeria have been blamed for posting poor performances, delays, cancellations. Recently, the NCAA came out with their assessment of the situation without telling the world what caused those cancellations and what caused those delays.Placing airlines, their own airlines, in a position that is very, very unfair, because you would expect when you say airlines canceled 30 flights, you should also give them the headings like 20 per cent of the cancellations came as a result of weather. The other one came as a result of VIP movement. The other one came as a result of the airline. Nobody said that. They just posted that their airlines are recording delays.

“Air Peace alone, this year, has recorded about 18 bird strikes and that means a lot to the operations of an airline. It was a bird strike that took out an aircraft and forced the pilot to ditch it into the Hudson River in the United States. But we thank God Almighty that we never had any such incident caused by a bird strike here. But it’s something very serious. One airline alone, experiencing 18 bird strikes tell a lot on its operations. The year is not finished and we are talking about airlines posting delays. When one happens, it affects the operations of that aircraft, which is supposed to do eight operations a day,” Onyema said.

He explained that once bird strike happens, “assuming you are doing your first flight or second flight, it will be very difficult to recover from that and do the other flights on time. So when we are criticizing, Nigerian airlines and delays and cancellations, we must look at it and tell ourselves the truth. In fact, there was a day we had two bird strikes in one station, in Benin.”

He said that besides weather and VIP movement, which cause most of the delays, poor airport infrastructure also contributes, noting that passenger screening, check in and passenger processing are hindered or slowed due to lack of capacity in the terminal, deployment of screening equipment and sometimes in adequate personnel.

The Air Peace Chairman said many of the airports in the country do not have airfield

“So, what you now do as an airline, you try to sacrifice Kano, Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt, and rescue those sunset airports first. While you’re doing that, these other four airports that you could fly into at night, are delayed and the passengers will have to wait. The airlines are blamed. How about passenger education? Some of the problems we are having also are caused by the way we run operations in Nigeria. We need to speak the truth.

 “Let us tell Nigerians that we are also contributing to the delays. Let me tell you how. This is called scheduled operations. When you leave this country and go elsewhere, if you have 8 o’clock flight from Atlanta to Miami, you have 9 o’clock to Atlanta to Miami, 10 o’clock from Atlanta to Miami, if your 8 o’clock is disturbed by whatever reason, it does not have to stop the 9 o’clock to Miami and 10 o’clock to Miami flights. It’s not so in Nigeria.

 “Weather could stop you from executing a particular operation. Maybe you are in Benin and it rains cat and dogs, planes couldn’t land in Benin, and at the end of the day, you cancel the Benin flight for that day; maybe in the evening, coming to Lagos. The Benin people will tell you that the first thing you do in the morning is to come and take them. It is not done like that. What is done is that you tell the passengers, please reschedule to the next available operations.

 That’s how it is done. But you dare not do that in Nigeria. If you do that, they will come to the airport and fight you and say, they were supposed to fly yesterday. Even if it was not the fault of the airline. They will force you to fly them by unleashing violence on the airline personnel and the airport authorities will be watching them do that. It’s only in Nigeria that you see passengers going almost to the tarmac to stop the moving plane because it was their turn to fly. They try to do it at times. So we need to educate passengers also,” he said.

MRO

SenatorAdede and Chairman of Air PeaceOnyema have both decried the cost of maintaining aircraft overseas and frowned at the inability to get land to build a maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO) facility in the country following bureaucracy and high cost of land acquisition.

Onyema said that about eight of his aircraft are at different maintenance facilities overseas at huge cost to the airline and wished that the immediate past Minister of Aviation had concentrated on establishing a maintenance facility by facilitating it and encouraging investors to invest in the project instead of striving to establish a national carrier.

On the land charges both Adede and Onyema shared their thoughts. Senator Adede said one of his proposals was for the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria to effect a reduction to land charge cost for holistic development.

“Reduction in land charge by FAAN, how can you even develop your local capacity when every single operator takes his plane outside of the country to maintain? The cost of ferrying this planes to and from abroad is so huge, why? Because we don’t have MROs, FAAN would not give you land to develop hangars.They charge you 100+ millions. It’s even cheaper to buy land in Ikoyi than to get land in Ikeja and so you find out the industry is not moving forward.In other parts of the world, they are given land on lease to develop the industry over a period of 20 years and then you can now pay back,” he said.

On his part, Chairman of Air Peace said he had equally applied for a land from FAAN to commence building an MRO since 2016 but sadly, that has not come to pass despite the high cost in hundreds of millions of Naira attached to the land.

“If you ask, I would say an MRO would have been what government should have thought about to save capital flight but even at that they should create an enabling environment for serious minded business men to go into it because the government has no business there, they will just fail.There are serious minded investors who have the capital to embark on this investment all they need is the right atmosphere,” he further said.

Other stakeholders who made their contributions at the meeting aligned their positions with the above views, reinforcing the need to support the airlines and the industry and also to review existing policies, especially BASA to give domestic carriers more opportunities to benefit from the hundreds of Nigerians who travel in and out of the country every day.