Foreign airlines are depleting our industry, economy, Aviation experts lament
The Federal Government has been urged to take urgent steps in addressing the trade imbalance between Nigeria and other countries, stressing that foreign airlines were taking advantage of the situation at the detriment of domestic airlines.
They argued that the current Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) and the Open Skies Agreement (OSA) have further given foreign airlines the opportunity to deplete the aviation industry and the country’s economy just as they added that foreign airlines had dominated the country’s airspace resulting in about $3bn capital flight, annually.
While making the call at the 23rd Annual LAAC Conference & Awards themed:”Boosting Aviation Investments through Policy” at Radisson Blu Hotel, Lagos, they lamented that if the government fails to take drastic steps in addressing the problem, domestic airlines would be run out of business by their foreign counterparts.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Air Peace Airline, Allen Onyema, pointed out that foreign airlines were the major problem bedeviling the domestic carriers in the country.
Mr. Onyema stressed that since foreign airlines started operating into Nigeria over 40 years ago, none of them have contributed significantly to the growth of the aviation industry and the economy at large.
He added that all they do was to repatriate all the money made in Nigeria back to their country through capital flights.
In his words: “Tell me the name of any foreign airline that you know that have contributed greatly to the growth of the aviation industry or even our economy? Since all the 34 foreign airlines have been operating in Nigeria, how many jobs have they created for Nigerians?
“When we established Air Peace Airline four years ago and till date, the airline has employed over 3,000 Nigerians in addition to 150 pilots out of which only 30 are expatriates.”
Mr. Onyema lamented that despite all the problems orchestrated by the foreign airlines, the Federal Government still favours them through the BASA and Open Skies Agreement without protecting domestic airlines.
“In America private jet don’t do multiple destinations; in Nigeria, not only do we have multiple destinations for the foreign airlines, we also give them multiple frequencies at the detriment of our own local airlines. Tell me why they will not deplete our industry” he asked.
Air Peace CEO added: “If we support Nigerian airlines, 95% of them will succeed. We must begin to have deliberate policies to support our local airlines. The single aviation market is a fraud because there is no level playing field among Nigerian airlines and other foreign airlines. No foreign airline means good for this country. Foreign airlines should not be allowed to come into this country to undo us.”
Corroborating his assertions, CEO African Aviation Services, Nick Fadugba, affirmed that Nigerian government has failed to protect domestic airlines operating in the country.
While giving an illustration, Mr. Fadugba said: “In Ghana, there are five domestic airlines that are registered as schedule operators and no other airline is allowed by their CAA except maybe one of the airlines can no longer function as a schedule operator before another airline can be allowed to operate. Do we have such a system in our country to protect our airlines?” he asked.
According to him, Nigerian Airways had 14 slots to the Heathrow airport and lost out when the airline was liquidated because the government failed to allocate those slots to local flag carriers to operate in the UK.
“Look at the difficulty our airlines are facing just to fly to London. The onus rests more on the government and they must put the right policies in place to make aviation thrive in Nigeria,” Mr. Fadugba stressed.
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