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Airlines Display Failure Symptoms
Some Nigerian airlines are already showing some symptoms of impending failure occasioned by poor dispatch, operational reliability, schedule integrity and poor customer satisfaction, woleshadare.net has learnt.
Already, some carriers are finding it extremely difficult to pay salaries and meet their day-to-day operational needs, heightening fears that airlines might voluntarily close shop.
But two airlines (names withheld) may close shop before the end of this year due to their inability to pay for the maintenance of their aircraft overseas. Virtually all Nigerian airlines are in distress, with many of them hugely indebted to banks. Some of them are said to be under receivership.
Spokesman for the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Sam Adurogboye, said that an airline becomes dangerous when it can no longer pay salaries, foot its bills and maintain its airplanes.
He stated that that is the reason the aviation regulatory body conducts periodic financial audit of the carriers, stressing that the NCAA would not fail to withdraw the licence of any defaulting carrier.
Adurogboye noted that before that, the NCAA would naturally suspend the defaulting carriers’ operations when it is not able to meet its day-to-day demand. The aviation business is capital intensive and has to respond to a lot of variables.
In order to address the question, the airlines considered factors such as political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental.
They also listed double-digit aggregate inflation, high interest rates (up to 20 per cent), poor access to long term lending, generally low productivity due to absence of a virile manufacturing base, high unemployment, low skill levels due to low literacy level as factors militating against a vibrant aviation industry.
The same thing applies to many African airlines, which are going through difficult times and this can easily infer how the travelling public rate them by how they exercise their right to choose, which airline they patronise.
That equally explains why over 70 per cent traffic in Africa is carried by non-African airlines. An aircraft pilot, Capt. Dung Pam disclosed that the airlines can make better use of their resources by consolidating and cooperating with each other, adding that this will enable them to acquire modern, comfortable and more efficient aeroplanes, as well as reduce their impact on the environment.
He lamented that most Nigerian airline operators and service providers are paying lip service to safety and quality management. Pam said: “On the side of the airline operators and service providers, there is very little evidence to demonstrate management commitment and responsibility to safety policies and objectives. There is no evidence of practical risk management within line management personnel.
“This involves the identification, analysis and elimination or mitigation of the risks that pose a significant threat to the reputation of the organisation. It has to do with balancing the allocation of resources and making positive changes.” He reiterated that the result might be a review of the operating and or maintenance procedures to achieve a segregation of exposure or the building of redundancies to protect against perceived risks.
The tools used to achieve this are usually regulations, training and technology. There are nearly 400 commercial airline companies are available in the world (out of which almost 100 companies, of late, are not operating. Over 50 per cent of them are private owned companies and the rest (less than 50 per cent) are public companies.