Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, has lamented the shortage of aircraft in Nigeria to service routes and has urged the government to enhance the capacity of local operators for their survival.
Asserting that without the local operators, there would be no industry, the Minister decried the high mortality rates of airlines in the aviation industry for many years at the recently concluded League of Airports and Aviation Correspondents (LAAC) conference held in Lagos.
He said: “I think more than 100 airlines have come and gone under in the last 40, 50 years. We have had some AOC holders who never came at all. They have AOC, but they never want to come at all.”
He decried the absence of a national carrier, emphasising that the country should have “flag carriers within aviation, who will make us proud. And we, of course, will service our reciprocal rights under all the different Bilateral Air Services Agreements (BASAs) that we have.”
Keyamo said that local operators “are struggling to cover their routes, not to talk about our international routes. Air France is coming here 10 times a week. We are not going to Paris. Lufthansa is coming here. We are not going to Frankfurt. Delta United is coming from America. Nobody is going to America.
“Even here, South Africa is coming here. Nobody is going to South Africa. We only managed to get the London route recently for Air Peace. We are also pushing for them to take us to Heathrow now. We are pushing. We want to make a point to them.”
The Minister also urged his counterparts in the United Kingdom to respect existing obligations under BASAs, stating that without them, there can’t be real connectivity.
Encouraging the government to enhance the capacity of local operators and giving them access, the Aviation Minister said, “Enhance your people. We can be as big as Ethiopia or Qatar. Make policies; don’t have to give them money. That is the role of the government.”
He also highlighted the need to train and retrain technical people within the industry, ensuring that the country’s standard is raised globally.
On revenue optimisation, Keyamo refuted the idea of exclusion of taxes for so-called VIPs.
“I don’t like VIPs. You know, I am from civil society. I’m not coming from a privileged background. So, my reputation has always been that I don’t recognise VIPs. We are all the same, as human beings. So, I don’t see any reason why we should exclude some people from paying our taxes, paying our levies in our airports.”
Second Vice President, Aviation and Safety Round Table Initiative (ASRTI), Alex Nwuba, said that apart from how the issue of payments to foreign airlines was handled without any real word on solutions for domestic airlines, the result is that the economy acts as the single largest impediment to the aviation industry, creating instability in travel demand, price and cost inflation, as well as rising operations, high maintenance, and labour costs that erode profit margins and present an existential threat in going through operational challenges for airlines.
Like Keyamo, the Vice President said that it is necessary to overcome the character of the ‘big-man syndrome’, and ‘wait for me’ attitude.
Narrating his experience at an airport where the manager complained that a lot of people called him to ask the aircraft to wait while they got to the airport, he stressed the importance of time management for the successful operation of airlines.
“So, while we look at logistical delays like fueling for so many departures, we can truly identify the challenge as inefficiency, something equipment, manpower, and efficiency can address. The issue of pilot shortages is a future problem—not a current one, but one that is going to become a problem in the future as we are making limited efforts in developing new pilots, engineers, dispatchers, and traffic controllers,” Nwuba said.
