The Senate yesterday pleaded with the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) to suspend their planned withdrawal of air services over increasing cost of aviation fuel (Jet – A1).
Chairman, Senate Committee on Aviation, Senator Smart Adeyemi, made the plea when he met with the national executive of the AON in his office in Abuja.
Adeyemi said such an action by the AON at this time might impact negatively on the nation’s economic and socio-political stability.
The airline operators had on Monday at a meeting with members of the Aviation Committee in the House of Representatives, threatened to stop operations within 72 hours if the cost of aviation fuel is not urgently brought down to N400 per litre as against its present price of N670 per litre or given bailout by the Federal Government.
Chairman of Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), Alhaji Abdulmunaf Sarina, who led some members of the executive of the association to an emergency meeting with Adeyemi, also repeated the threat by declaring that if nothing is done to save the stressful situation the operators will withdraw their services by Friday morning.
Sarina said they cannot cope with the high cost of operation worsened by upsurge in the price of aviation fuel.
“Based on the cost component of airline operation in Nigeria today, actual cost for ticket of one hour flight is N150,000 but passengers are being charged a paltry N50,000.00 which is not sustainable.
“We are overburdened by this ticket subsidy and heavily indebted to Banks with consequences of running out of business if required action is not taken,” Sarina said.
Worried by the threat, Adeyemi passionately pleaded with the leadership of AON to give the Senate and by extension, the National Assembly a reasonable numbers of days to wade in the matter through interface with the executive.
He said the issue will be raised on the floor of the Senate during plenary today for the purposes of making the federal government to give the operators, expected bail out.
Meanwhile, an aviation expert and a former director of operations, Nigerian Aviation Handling Company (NAHCO), Mr. Hurbert Odika, has said the current scarcity of aviation fuel would persist until the poor conditions of Nigeria’s refineries are turned around and the country begins full crude oil refining.
Speaking in an interview in Lagos, Odika stated that the hike in air fares was due to airlines’ running costs.
He explained, that the industry would never have witnessed the current economic predicament caused by shortage of aviation fuel in the industry if the refineries were working
“We will refine here at chapter labour cost , no ocean freight to bring back the finished product, no charges in foreign currency for refining the PMS or AGO to return them back to the country. Nigeria at the moment is cheating itself,” Odika said.
He expressed displeasure that till today no one had explained why the refineries were not up and running.
According to him the oil boom was time bound as renewable energy has come to stay while the West is working seriously to ensure that by 2040, renewable energy in Europe will form 80 – 90 per cent of their consumption.
Odika congratulated the airlines in the country for forming an alliance as it has the capacity of keeping domestic airlines alive and providing consumer satisfaction.
He said airlines can now transfer passengers to other airlines and it will help to improve on standards, timing apart from weather adding, that days of sitting endlessly at the airport waiting for flights to somewhere over with the alliance
On the fare hike, Odika said it was expected like every other business but remarked that the hike in Jet A1 from N200 to N625 per litre, sounded unrealistic.
While calling on the operators in the alliance to reappraise their routes and readjust fares accordingly, he stated that if there was justification for the increase in fare, the airlines could do so but should not make it a blanket increase across the nation
“You don’t charge the same fare for a flight to Benin that is 35 mins as somebody going to Yola or Kano that is over one hour. That is not realistic,” Odika said.
On touting, Odika praised the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, for being able to reduce the presence of touts at the nation’s airport terminals, but berated the Authority for not considering space for apron before building the new terminal in Lagos.
“The new terminal cannot take more than two wide- bodied aircraft at a time at the apron. That will make it less attractive to foreign airlines. It will consequently reduce the commercial value of the terminal especially at peak periods of airline operations.
“To remedy this, the federal government has to demolish existing structures around the terminal to increase apron space,” Odika said.