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How bad policies destroy airlines –TopBrass chief
The Managing Director of TopBrass Airlines, Capt. Roland Iyayi, has exonerated Nigerian operators from the incessant collapse of airlines.
He attributed their demise to the deliberate and consistent policy geared towards ensuring that the airlines that are the primary players in the industry do not survive.
Iyayi, who spoke to Woleshadarenews on the sideline of aviation journalists forum in Lagos recently, said: “You have airlines failing is not because they can’t run the airlines, it is because the environment in which they operate is extremely harsh and not conducive for growth.
“You heard some of the presenters talking about charges in the industry; we have multiplicity of charges in the industry that are inconsistent with the purpose of growing the industry. On the one hand, we have government agencies that are supposed to be cost recovery agencies being geared to grow their internally generated revenue (IGR). That is an inconsistent objective with the industry growth.”
He reiterated that some of the problems associated with the sector were things that need to be looked into.
He, however, lamented that most of the things they do in the industry were borne out of knee jerk reactions.
Airline operators have been screaming and complaining about the same issue over the years that have culminated in sending over 27 airlines under in the past 25 years.
They attributed the development to “policy formulation, policy deviation and policy contradictions on the part of the executive arm of government.”
The Federal Government had tried to address the situation in 2006 through the Presidential Task Force set up by former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
There has been no remarkable change in the way government agencies in the aviation sector churned out policies because the report of the task force was not implemented.
The operators also complained that foreign airlines were enjoying certain incentives that are denied local carriers, one of which is the approval of multiple destinations to foreign airlines, which they said had adversely affected their own operations.
The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority’s policy of levying operators flying on scheduled flights out of Nigeria is a punitive measure devoid of any economic sense to the airlines.
The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) is said to charge the most expensive land rate in the world at N60,000 per square metre. That is more expensive than choice land in Victoria Island, Lagos, and Asokoro in Abuja according to statistics.
He berated multiple designations given to foreign airlines, arguing that the policy has done incalculable damage to domestic airlines.
His words: “Let me say this, Ethiopian airlines and indeed every other international carrier flying into multiple designations in Nigeria are carrying that out under what you call a commercial agreement What that means is that the airline besides the designated airport in Nigeria which typically is Lagos will now go back to the ministry and say we want to be able to operate into Abuja, Port Harcourt or Kaduna and they will say to the ministry that for every passenger we carry on any and every of these routes we will pay you $20.”
Iyayi said that by virtue of that agreement, the ministry looked at it and hazard a guess of projection of one million passengers from this operation in a year.
He calculated that over 20 million dollars was targeted leading to the signing of the commercial agreement to the detriment of the domestic operator.
“So, you are getting 20 million dollars from an international operator, but do you put that back into the system to grow the domestic operator or you are taking that away from the industry and you have allowed the domestic operator to just wallow and die?
“The issues are very much of commercial interest of the government, if the government would look at the benefits that an airline provides to its local economy particularly over and above the contribution by way of a merger 20 million dollars for instance annually from an international airline then it will do the needful,” he added.
