Dr. Obiora Okonkwo, Chairman, United Nigeria Airline, while briefing aviation correspondents on activities of the airline in 12 months on Wednesday at Lagos airport.
Posted by Sade Williams
Nigeria’s Aviation sector may soon go into extinction if government does not intervene urgently to stem the issues beleaguering and draining the meagre operating revenue of the airlines.
Some of the big issues identified by one of the operators, Dr. Obiora Okonkwo, chairman of United Nigeria Airline at a Press conference with aviation on Wednesday at Lagos airport are high cost of aviation fuel, increasing exchange rate, deplorable facilities such as ‘Sun Set airports’ where airlines have to plan within the time of operations of the airports, among others.
While speaking on the activities of United Nigeria Airline (UNA) in the last on year, he said that though the airline struggled amidst challenging environment to airlift and satisfy its customers during the period, it will not jeopardise safety despite all odds.
He particularly raised concern over the increasing cost of aviation fuel, lamenting that a litre of the commodity was sold for N190 in February 2021 when the airline started operations but it has risen to N400 in one year.
He said this, if not nipped in the bud may lead airlines to increase fares soon.
“The cost of aviation is increasing at an alarming rate, when we started operations in February 2021, we used to buy a litre for N190 and ticket was sold for N23,000 but it is now sold for N400 a litre and ticket fares not comensurate with what obtains in the market. We are all.in this same issue because we buy fuel from same market.
“The issue of forex is not abating, rather it is getting worse, the rate is now between N450 and N570, depending on where you get it but staff salaries are being paid, training is not stopped yet aviation is a chain, a whole lot is taken into consideration. We need a lot of support from government to keep the airlines going and keep our passengers.”, he said.
Speaking on night operations, Okonkwo lamented that 80 percent of Nigerian airports are on Sunset regime, adding that this alone cost the airlines huge sum as they park their aircraft when they are supposed to be flying.
“This also cause delays and cancellations because it puts a lot more of pressure on the operators, we have to schedule our operations within a particular time when the airports close by 6 p.m, the passengers are also affected, this is an urgent call to government that the aviation sector is a great contributor to the economy and needs urgent attention.
“We should be talking about 50 million annual domestic traffic next year and not 9 million out of over 200 million population of Nigeria”, he said.
The UNA by boss however said it is opened to interline/codeshare agreement, advising the local operators should work together to achieve this goal in order to ameliorate passengers’ ordeal in times delays and cancellations
Speaking further on the activities of United Nigeria Airline, he said it airlifted 26,000 passengers in one year and now has five aircraft in operations.
“We have also enjoyed very productive year of client relationship. During the period, we have united over 260,000 passengers with their destinations peacefully, comfortably and safely operating 40 daily flights. That represents 75 percent of our total capacity. We took off in February reaching Lagos, Abuja, Enugu and Asaba after demo flights in January 2021.
“It has been a year that has seen whole lot of challenges, no doubt. But beyond all those, we have seen great achievements in our strategic plan, our expansion plan, our growth plan. We had opened new locations. We have also increased our fleet from an initial 4 Embraer 145 aircraft to include one Airbus A320. We have also worked as close as possible with the regulatory agencies: Ministry of Aviation, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) which has been working so hard, FAAN, NAMA etc to sustain a very robust working relationship. We are very happy and proud of their efforts to strengthen and improve things in the aviation industry”, he added.
