New maintenance facility to save operators $3 billion annually

Airline operators can now heave a sigh of relief as airline operators can now do heavy maintenance of their airplanes in the country to save costs as a new aircraft maintenance base has been set up in Lagos.

With that, Nigeria will be saving $3bn annually as airlines have indicated their interest to patronise the facility.

Speaking to Woleshadare.net, the Managing Director of Onedot Aviation, an aircraft maintenance base in Lagos, Capt. Henry Oludotun Ogunyemi said flying airplanes overseas for heavy maintenance like C-Check now has a far greater cost implication, advising airlines to use local Maintenance Repair Overhaul (MRO) facilities.

Onedot Aviation has been approved by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to carry out maintenance checks both line and heavy maintenance, for Beechcraft, HS-125, Bombardier among others since 2014 and Boeing 737-200 Series and Boeing 737-300/400/500 series  June 2016.

 

Captain Ogunyemi added that Onedot Aviation has already successfully carried out a B-Check on an Air Stream’s Boeing 737-200 cargo aircraft which is currently flying perfectly and encouraged other domestic airlines to follow suit as the services are top notch with qualified engineers and state of the art tech.

Nigerian operators have complained about the foreign exchange rate which they said make maintenance overseas very difficult for them.

 The biggest problem airlines are contending with in terms of maintenance is the high cost of C-Check, which has compelled some carriers to abandon their airplanes in countries of repairs.

Airlines periodically carry out checks on their airplanes. The checks are A to D checks. The A and B checks are lighter checks, while C and D are heavier checks.

On the domestic front, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) had imposed a calendar limit for a C-check at every 18 months and depending on the scope of work to be performed.

An average C-check costs $1 million. By today’s exchange rate of N410/$1, this can be conservatively N350 million per aircraft every 18 months.

It would be recalled that about 60 to 70 per cent of cost goes into labour, while the balance is the cost of parts and engineering services associated with the C-checks.

Presently, Nigerian airlines collectively operated a fleet of about 65 airplanes and with an estimated N350million for C-check,that is about N21.15billion of capital flight every 18 months (N13.43billion per annum).

Also, considering other incidental costs of about N21.7billion ($70, 000) associated with each C-check done abroad, the cumulative for the fleet operated collectively was about N1.41billion every 18 months.

The C-Checks became more problematic for the nation’s airline operators because most airlines were unable to pay for the checks and eventually abandon the aircraft at the foreign MROs who usually refuse to release the aircraft to the airlines until all invoices are settled.

The Onedot chief who listed out some other benefits of carrying out heavy maintenance in MROs locally said it would save the airlines a lot of funds which can lead to business expansion for such airlines.

His words, “There will be reduced stress on the dollar currency and this cut across all the airlines. It is cheaper for the airlines to carry out their maintenance in the country. First and foremost, the ferry cost is saved as it takes time to ferry an aircraft to wherever it is done overseas. “

“Even the ground time is saved as sometimes some aircraft stay six months and others stay a year so the airline will save in ground time. Saving money and ground time increases the profit of the airline. So all Arline’s are free to check our services out.”

  He also said using local MROs can enable the MRO increase its capacity and train and employ more Nigerians as well.

“We have experienced Base engineers in Nigeria already that can take over from the expatriates who are already on ground with the initial know-how and technology. With the MRO there will be jobs for the teeming engineers that we have now. There will be job opportunities and there will be training and retraining of engineers to keep a base of sound technical hands who hitherto flew overseas.”