Aero revs to life with six aircraft fleet, rejigs maintenance unit

The oldest commercial airline in the country, Aero Contractors, has returned to scheduled operations after four months of voluntary withdrawal.

The “rebirth”, which typifies resilience, may have put to rest conflicts of interest and instability in the management structure of the distressed airline.

Founded in 1959, Aero Contractors has been under receivership and care of Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) since 2016. It has also been embroiled in one crisis or the other, leading to its voluntary suspension of scheduled flights in July over financial constraints and capacity crunch.
Managing Director of the airline, Capt. Ado Sanusi, who is also on his second coming to the airline, said the carrier has recoiled to take its rightful place in the local and regional market, offering customers a new experience and reassuring investors.

In its current fleet are Boeing 737s and Dash 8 (Q-400), servicing destinations like Warri, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja, Benin, Yola, Sokoto, Kano, Asaba and Calabar.
Sanusi said: “We are pleased to resume full services with additional capacity to local aviation. Our coming in will help to stabilise the high prices, especially during this festive season.”

Given that the prevailing harsh environment that partly led to withdrawal has not changed, Sanusi said Aero has embarked on cost saving measures where necessary.

“AMCON has also given us the mandate to raise funds. We have also looked at what we have done before and what caused our failures in the past. We are very determined not to commit the same mistakes,” he said.

Crucial to the rebound and future of the airline are four business development units, namely: the Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO), the Fixed Wing airline operations, the Rotary Wing helicopter services and the Aero Training School to build technical capacity of personnel.

With the toll of grounded aircraft vis-à-vis serviceable airplanes increasing by the day, Sanusi reckoned that local airlines were finding it harder to maintain equipment overseas.
Hence, the decision to expand the erstwhile thriving Aero MRO hangar in Lagos and train more engineers, to enable the facility to handle at least “90 per cent of the aircraft flown in the Nigerian airspace”. The ambitious plan will begin with the Boeing 737 series, and then the Embraers and Airbus family.

“We are also looking at strategic partnerships with MROs globally, especially with Africans, to see where we can bring expertise to augment what we have. If not all, at least 90 per cent of the types of airplanes flown in the Nigerian airspace should be managed here.

“We are also working hard to ensure that we have investors that would invest in maintenance because you must have a formidable maintenance organisation for an aviation industry to prosper,” he said.

But investors rarely commit resources to where stability is not guaranteed. “We have nothing to worry about on stability. We are very confident that He who owns tomorrow is very much with us,” Sanusi said.

Former Director General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Dr. Harold Demuren, said the airline withdrew operations, to recharge and get better.

Demuren noted that the constraints were not peculiar to Aero Contractors. “Today, fuel and foreign exchange are very difficult to get. When you draw a business plan at the rate of N170/$ and it reaches N800, it is certainly going to be very tough to survive. Yet, you cannot match up the airfares because customers will not be able to fly. That is the reality of our industry,” he said.