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Managing Director of Belujane Consult and former spokesperson of the liquidated national carrier, Nigeria Airways, Mr Chris Aligbe, speaks with OLASUNKANMI AKINLOTAN on industry challenges and possible solutions

What are the major challenges facing Nigerian airlines?

The airlines are trying their best with the circumstances they are facing. There is no doubt that they are making efforts to stay in business. But the challenges are immense. Some of the challenges are external, others are internal. We can resolve the external challenges if it is possible, but the internal challenges should resolve themselves. But the fact of the matter is that they do not see that they are also a problem to themselves. They are only seeing the external problems. There is the challenge of forex, and that is why I have always said the airlines should be able to say, ‘Look, this is a major challenge for us. We don’t have the forex to be able to pay for our maintenance, to be able to keep our aircraft in the air.’ They don’t have that. They can have the naira, I don’t know, but even with the naira, you need to have forex.

So, one of the first things they should do is to request a forex allocation specifically dedicated to the airlines from the government, the central bank, not just for anything, but for maintenance and for payment of their lease rentals. Once they have the naira, they can buy forex easily from the central bank to pay for maintenance and their lease rentals. With these two, the aircraft will be in the air. They will have more aircraft. As of now, many of them have their aircraft somewhere in maintenance. They cannot pay because they have no access to forex.

Secondly, they were talking about Jet A1. Jet A1 is now available. They are only talking about the high cost of Jet A1. Even airlines in other countries still have challenges with Jet A1. But they are operating. So, they cannot push that as a major impediment to effective operation. It is a challenge, but that challenge is not as severe as the non-availability of forex for the airlines.

Again, they will tell you about airport facilities. We don’t have good facilities. Our airports are improving in terms of facilities. That won’t be the challenge they will pull out. They will blame it for their poor operations. It is not true. The challenge is there, but that is not something they will point to as impeding their successful operation.

The next thing they are not looking at, which is not external, is their internal problems. For all the airlines, except for one or two, the major challenge they have is owner-manager syndrome. Until they realise that they can own an airline and get managers who can manage the airlines effectively without getting them hamstrung, they will not come out of it.

They will not do very well. I kept pointing at people like Boyo, who manages his airline, and there is not so much difficulty. The fact that Boyo is a niche carrier, but if you start naming airlines in Africa or whatever, you cannot name Overland.

He is a niche carrier, he is doing well, but he is not yet at that point that Nigeria can beat its chest and say yes, Overland is one of the major carriers in Nigeria. Ibom Air is a sub-regional airline owned by a sub-regional government.

So far, they have managed to do well and to run reasonably. Yes, they have had challenges here and there, but at least they are managing. Today, they are still the first choice when you put airlines together, and their services, particularly schedule integrity, are pretty high. It is about 92, and when you compare them to some other airlines like AWA, which also has a high schedule integrity percentage with the highest delay time of 30 minutes, you will see a difference. But AWA uses 30 minutes as a point. But within 30 minutes, they count it as a one-time departure. But Ibom Air takes 15 minutes. So, anything beyond 15 minutes, Ibom Air begins to count it as a delay. So that is the difference. So, when you compare it, you can see that Ibom Air is doing well. But again, that is not yet a crescendo.

How would you assess the local airlines’ current business models?

Again, the models in place for the airlines are not right, they have not hit the right models for operation. They just get the aircraft, they put it in and say I am going to do this route and that route, and their preparation won’t take them there. And, on the kind of aircraft they are acquiring, it is now that some of them are beginning to look at the aircraft, the right aircraft for some routes. Because you can operate with a Q400 and you have a full flight, you don’t operate it with a 737-800, where you will not have a full flight. So, many of them are beginning to use CRJ and Embraer, which are good domestic aircraft for domestic operation for certain routes, where you know that almost all the time you have a 100 per cent load factor. So, they are beginning to see that and only a few routes will have a typical aircraft like a 737, where they are going to have a good load factor, at least 80 to 90 per cent load factor. They are beginning to have the right size of aircraft. Now, the whole idea of wanting to go to every destination, that we must service this destination, service that destination, service that, no, it is not. That is not what to do. Choose where you are going and look at your bottom line. The bottom line is the financial resources that come into your income you are making. That is what you should do. Don’t pride yourself by saying I want to go everywhere; I am still talking at a domestic level. There are not many airlines, there is only one airline that goes international for us. But thank God that the airline has taken only one route, and that is London. The other routes are not operational. When we are talking about Dubai, Jeddah, the US, and South Africa. Are we there? We are not there.

Unfortunately, the two major routes that Nigerians go to are the UK and the US. Today, we are not in the US. There has been the designation of two airlines to the US. But I tell you, it will take a minimum of four to five years before any Nigerian airline will operate on the US route. At least 4 years. The route is now closed. Nigerian airlines are short out of the US for the simple fact that they have withdrawn the CAT 1. We cannot get CAT1 again until there is an airline that is ready to operate into the US, and they look at the airline, whether it is meeting the required standard for CAT1 to be restored to us. However, the airline can operate through a transit point for a country that has CAT1. But if we start operating there, the US can now have time to look at the airline and re-certify it and say yes, this airline has ensured that the Nigerian authorities have met or Nigerian CAA is meeting the standard in terms of airworthiness certification, a safety oversight for the airline to restore CAT1. So, it will take about two years for that restoration, and it will take about two years for an airline to fully prepare to start its operation into the US. So, in the next four years, we are most unlikely to have a Nigerian airline flying into the US as we do today.

Why did we lose that certification in the first place?

No airline was operating into the US. If you are given CAT1 and in two years you don’t operate into the US, you lose CAT1. That was what happened. It is not only Nigeria that lost it, but many countries lost it. If you have CAT1, you must be operating because they must constantly oversee your safety standards and airworthiness standards. And the way they oversight it is through your aircraft. When your flight comes in, they enter it and check whether you are maintaining the standards. They have no chance to oversight because we are not flying. So, after two years, you will lose it until we start operating again. Before they now look at it, then they can certify. So, it will take about two years for us to achieve this. Any airline that seriously wants to fly directly to the US will have to prepare for about two years. Meanwhile, you won’t just get a certification today and start operating immediately. That is the way to fail. So that is why I said we are in a quandary. Nigeria, we cannot fly. So whatever designations you are making now are of no effect because no designated airline can fly except through a transit point. It was happening before when Nigeria Airways was flying, before we could go to US, we would fly through Dakar because Dakar then was CAT 1 and they ensure that flying through Dakar at least a transit point, Dakar then ensures that yes, we have all that it takes, and we get into the US but not a direct flight.


https://punchng.com/no-airline-owned-100-by-fg-can-survive-aligbe/