Nigerian carriers faced with huge costs burden, says Nwuba

President of Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association of Nigeria, Dr Alex Nwuba has taken a deep reflection into the country’s aviation industry and came up with the verdict that the sector is truly challenged.

He noted that airlines are faced with huge costs from all service providers and airports are equally faced with what they deem, with many describing it as unnecessary charges.

Nwuba who spoke with Aviation Metric on the sidelines of the 28th League of Airports And Aviation Correspondents (LAAC) seminar in Lagos said the rest of the industry are economic players as the difficulties bite everyone.

He said, “If we examine aviation fuel, which is probably the largest cost component in the airline business, the prices keep rising. In many climes, hedging provides some breather, here, the business environment provides no such opportunity. The industry has proposed importing their fuel but this like many proposals represents a poorly thought-through demand that will fail to address the issue.”

He lamented that it appears that there are limited things the aviation sector can do, as it neither controls nor appears to have any input into monetary or fiscal policy, apparent from how the issue of payments to foreign airlines was handled without any real word on solutions for domestic airlines.

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According to him, the result is that the economy acts as the single largest impediment to the aviation industry, creating instability in travel demand, price and cost inflation; as well as rising operations, high maintenance, and labour costs that erode profit margins and present an existential threat.

Amid the hiccups, Nwuba hinted that operational challenges for airlines an interesting and generally include delays and cancellations, overcrowded airspace, pilot shortages, maintenance and delay disruptions and supply chain disruptions.

“The elements of these are generally considered impediments and the industry looks to probably wrong assumptions as the causes in the Nigerian environment”.

“If we ask people in the industry about Nigerian airline’s operating challenges, one of the first issues to be named will be the need for slots to address the airline wave models that have many airlines leaving for Abuja and Port Harcourt at 7 am and the need to create a spread of the operations to address what will be addressed as challenges.”

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He however disclosed that the problem with the slot model is that it is probably a solution looking for a problem, stressing that It fails to address the character and the operating model of Nigerian airlines’ as well as competition in the industry.

Going back to the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s when Nigerian airlines were unreliable and before the era of online booking systems, consumers were programmed to catch the airline on the ground, ready to go; and even today, with all of the available technology, including the ability to analyse airline performance and reliability data, and with the persistent character of inefficiency and delays, which he said the airlines often blame on airports and operational issues, consumers still make every attempt to catch the first and most likely the most reliable flight of the day which will give advantages to the airlines that can get the earliest slots.

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“Nigeria is interesting because, if we look at the 7 am wave for which we are demanding slots to address the issues, we do not see a long line of aircraft waiting in double-digit minutes to take off nor are there significant delays resulting from so many arriving flights. Therefore, one must question the benefit of slots to address any challenge.”

“The same applies to terminal capacity and the number of counters to check in passengers, handle the luggage and get them to the aircraft. We do not see people missing flights because there aren’t enough counters even though some people will argue otherwise”, he added.

Wole Shadare

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