How Nigerian airlines can get out of the woods, says Nwokoma

• Nigeria Air, wake up call for domestic airline

President, Association of Foreign Airlines and Representatives in Nigeria (AFARN), Mr. Kingsley Nwokoma said the biggest problem of Nigerian carrier is their inability to interline and codeshare.

Nwokoma equally noted that Nigerian carriers should align with international standard in carrying out their operations.

Codeshare is an airline partnership where one carrier markets service and places its code on another carrier’s flights. This offers carriers an opportunity to provide service to destinations not in their route structure.

Under the codeshare agreement which is common in the international aviation sector, the originating airline and the supporting airline agree on a formula for sharing the ticket cost.

Some existing Nigerian carriers have however accused foreign airlines of not wanting to codeshare with them but prefer of flying to multiple destinations. They say the absence of this arrangement has continued to result in long waiting hours, botched trips and failed appointments for travellers.

International airlines find it to interline or codeshare with Nigerian carriers because of lack of schedule integrity which has led to flight delays and cancellation usually as a result the carrier attribute to “operational reasons”.

Even in Nigeria, domestic airlines hardly want to hear about interlining with one another because of lack of trust.

He also stated that the establishment of national carrier, Air Nigeria should spur them to compete with the start-up airline and the international carriers operating into the country with quality service delivery. He said that is the only way they can partake in the huge market share.

He stated that inasmuch as he wanted government to provide a level playing field to other airlines that would compete with the new carrier, existing airlines should up their game by ensuring that standards are maintained with good service delivery, good safety record among others.

“They need to understand also that Nigeria Air would compete with other foreign airlines as We want to fly our own but if our own do not conform with global standards, nobody will want to fly you. Talk is cheap. Your service must be good. Airline operators of Nigeria (AON) need to put their house in order.”

 Speaking with journalists at the association’s office at the Lagos airport stated that government in the recent past extended some kind of assistance to Nigerian carriers in terms of bail out and waiver on payment on aircraft spare parts to enable them boost and cushion their operational costs.

His words, “That was few years ago but unfortunately, the beneficiaries of such gestures, regrettably could not sustain their operations and today, the airlines have become history. From that time till now, the industry has not recorded meaningful growth. Instead, those that have managed to reman afloat continue to groan due to high operational cost which they said have remained on geometrical increase which ordinarily ought not to be compared to what happens in other climes.”

“Stories abound whereby an airline begins operations today, tomorrow disappears from the radar. This is not good for the industry and what it means is the era of portfolio airline which is far gone should not be allowed anymore in Nigeria.” he added.

Wole Shadare