Tit-For-Tat: Beyond Nigeria’s Might With European Airlines

Nigeria showed her might against European carriers last week by excluding them from operating into the country in what it called reciprocity policy as international flights resumed. As good as the action may appear, the question remains the country’s ability to right some age long air pacts skewed against her airlines. WOLE SHADARE writes

 

Aviation as diplomatic tool

Aviation and diplomacy have always been, to some extent, interconnected. Aviation provides the possibility to travel long distances quickly, which changed the face of diplomacy in the twentieth century. However, the relationship between aviation and diplomacy is not only about allowing diplomats and state leaders to meet more easily and perform diplomacy. International aviation enormously changed the world.

Air travel from the domain of rich elites became an ordinary tool of moving from one place to another, often cheaper than other means of transportation, contributing to the proceeding globalisation.

Rapid growth

The air travel industry has been experiencing extremely rapid growth in the preceding decades.

According to the World Bank (2019), in 1975, 0.432 billion airline passengers were carried in the world. In 2018, this figure increased to 4.233 billion. This trend is present since the 1970s and the increase of the annual number of passengers became even higher since 2010 (World Bank 2019).

The popularity of air travel is important for economic reasons, but at the same time, it created a straight way for political and diplomatic significance to be attached to civil aviation. It can have several forms.

Governments might decide to open or sustain air links with particular countries, which might impact a larger number of people and affect the relations between countries.

Airlines might contribute to projecting and promoting national identities, while aviation institutions play roles as non-state actors of international relations.

Aeropolitics

Aviation politicking got to a head recently when the Federal Government disclosed that it would apply the tit for tat policy on European carriers that deny Nigerians access to their country through policies that are unfriendly and do not promote bilateral relations Nigeria has with these nations.

This is about the first time since Abacha era one is seeing concrete action from Nigerian government in ensuring that Nigerians and Nigerian airlines do not get shortchanged in the name of aeropolitics.

Aviation Minister, Hadi Sirika, had penultimate week warned that Nigeria would enforce the principle of reciprocity in granting permission to airlines to resume operations in the country as it opened its airspace.

According to him, the country’s position is informed by the ban placed by some countries on flights from Nigeria, and that Nigeria’s decision was taken in the interest of its citizens.

The ban

The minister carried out the threat. He matched his words with action. Air France, KLM, Lufthansa, Etihad Airways, Angolan TAG, Air Namibia and Royal Air Maroc were not approved to operate flights into Nigeria. He listed British Airways, Emirates, Ethiopian, AWA, and Middle East Airlines as airlines permitted into the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.

He also listed Egyptair, Virgin Atlantic, Turkish Airlines, AWA, Kenya Airways and Middle East Airlines as airlines allowed to operate into the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos. Explaining the reasons for the ban and the principle of reciprocity being applied to some countries, Sirika said Nigeria was simply following what each country had done to the country.

He said the country would go ahead and implement the principle of reciprocity to all countries that had banned flights from Nigeria. Some of the countries, which had banned flights from Nigeria are in the European Union as the EU included Nigeria on the banned countries on the first of July, 2020 when they opened their airspace.

Stakeholders hail action

Stakeholders have urged Sirika to take the ‘battle’ head long by causing a review of Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) Nigeria has with many foreign carriers that they claim is not in the country’s interest and one that has strangulated the country’s struggling airlines.

They admitted that it can be done with looking at the bigger picture of lack of capacity for Nigerian carriers. The country’s airlines put together are so small that they lack the critical mass to compete with the tiniest airline in Europe.

 

 

Air Peace, others too weak

Air Peace is the sole Nigerian airline on the periphery of international stage with a reported one serviceable B777, which age is set to be almost 15 year.

It lacks the resources, strategy and good international route network to even consider it a threat to mega carriers like British Airways, Delta, Emirates, Virgin Atlantic, Middle East Airlines, Lufthansa among others.

Nigeria’s 90 BASA pacts

Nigeria currently has 90 BASA pacts with only about 39 of it active. Some of these have been reviewed to create opportunities for domestic carriers, but are largely not utilised. Specifically, domestic carriers are yet to utilise 10 per cent of the air pact due to their limited capacity. Currently, 33 foreign carriers operate in and out of Nigeria almost on a daily basis. Among them are nine African carriers.

Air Peace recently opened Lagos-Sharjah operations. The unpreparedness of the nation’s carriers has slowed down the implementation of the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM).

As good as SAATM appears, Nigeria may be dragging her feet to its full implementation because of the weakness of her carriers that are too small, weak to compete with airlines like Ethiopian Airlines, Egypt Air, Kenya Airways, Air Maroc and troubled South African Airways.

Expert’s view

A former Managing Director of Virgin Nigeria, Capt. Dapo Olumide, while admitting that Nigerian carriers should be protected from predation by foreign airlines, he urged government to restrict them to just two port of entry rather than many destinations they are granted.

He equally supported the recent action of the Federal Government to bar some European carriers under the reciprocity policy of what is generally described as tit for tat but on BASA review, he had harsh words for the country’s airlines’, describing them as ‘over pampered.’

His words: “In terms of BASA, I am sick and tired of how we pamper our airlines because they are a bunch of un-serious people. How many years are we still pampering them from Okada days to Continental days. We have been having the same discussion. We are never ready. Look at the way Nigeria has messed up the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM). If you are not ready you are not ready.”

“There are other African countries that are members of SAATM but they have not come onboard yet because they are not ready but they have not disturbed you from coming into their country. Now to the third issue of BASA, I have a problem with that because the government has been using that to make money for years and we have not seen the benefits of the money. “We are not ploughing it back to the industry.”

Where has all the money from BASA gone? If they had gone to FAAN, NCAA and NAMA, we won’t be where we are today. FAAN would have had money to refurbish its equipment at the airport, NCAA would have had money to train their personnel and NAMA would have gotten all the navigational aids in all these years of BASA. “Let us say we have reciprocity for Dec 1, which airline do we have?

Is it Air Peace with only one serviceable B777 or is it Aero with 27 year old B737? You want to compete with one that will bring A350? Look at who you are competing with. You are competing with airlines that have aircraft that are not older than five years; B787. You can’t compete with them”.

“Look at their in-flight services; look at what they have at the airport. Until you get to a stage where you privatise your airport to people who know how to make money, reciprocity will not work. It is just us pampering these guys. They can’t find aircraft to lease because FOREX is not available because you can’t lease B777; you can’t do training abroad because there is no dollar in the Bank. Extend it by six months, middle of next year and say ok we give another extension of two years, they still cannot meet up.”

Last line

However, as attractive as the concept of reciprocity of rights is in BASAs negotiation, Nigeria as an economy is not primed to take full advantage of the concept. This results in a huge gap between Nigerian airlines and their foreign counterparts.

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