It’s Nigeria’s duty to ensure a deserved air of peace for this airline. It cannot survive the present aeropolitics all alone.
Even if all the airlines on the Nigeria-U.K route lower their fares below the present rock-bottom now, it does not detract from the fact that Air Peace is the reason. The fact speaks for itself. Before the commencement of the airline’s Lagos-London route on March 30, foreign airlines dominated the highly lucrative route. Of course, this also gave them the opportunity to exploit Nigerian travellers that were made to pay the highest fares in the region, while air travellers in neighbouring countries like Ghana, Togo and Benin Republic paid very low fares
These exorbitant fares peaked after about $800 million of their proceeds was trapped in the country. Mercifully, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has paid up these trapped proceeds, or at least a substantial part of it.
Before March 30, the two British flag carriers, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic were charging between N13-N15 million and N3-N5 million for business and economy class tickets, respectively, for the route. Nigerian air travellers suffered the same fate in the hands of other foreign carriers like KLM/Air France, Air Maroc, Delta Airlines, Lufthansa and even Ethiopian Airlines.
The implication of the financial pressure that the exorbitant fares inflicted on Nigerian travellers became so unbearable that many of them were forced to suspend international trips while some, like students, looked in the direction of our neighbouring countries where relatively lower fares obtained.
It is instructive to note that before these astronomical air fares, economy class tickets on the Nigeria-UK route was between N400,000 and N650,000, depending on the booking period, while business class was between N800,000 and N1.2 million.
However, these exorbitant ‘gang-up’ fares fell like a pack of cards the moment Air Peace joined the Lagos-London route. The airline’s announcement of N4 million and N1.2 million for business and economy classes on the route, respectively, was the game changer. It confirmed the belief that Nigerian air travellers were simply being exploited by these foreign airlines. In addition to this was a 15 per cent rebate that Air Peace granted Nigerian students abroad. Most of them had hitherto been scared stiff of travelling back home because of the high fares.
The reduction in fares on the Lagos-London route by Air Peace made its maiden flight to Gatwick Airport fully booked, as Nigerians could not believe that such fare reduction was possible.
But no sooner had Air Peace taken this obviously patriotic step to meet the aspirations of many Nigerian air travellers than the other airlines began to slash their fares. Air France, for instance, asked passengers to book between May 15 and June for economy class on the Lagos-London route with N907,782 as against the more than N2 million it was hitherto charging. Ditto British Airways that slashed its fares on the Abuja-London Heathrow from over N3 million to N1,394,536 for economy class. Virgin Atlantic also slashed its fares on the Lagos to London route from N2,353,200 to N980,654 for economy class. Virtually all of these fares, except that of British Airways, are lower than the N1.2 million that Air Peace charges.
But this development that saw the foreign airlines have their fares slashed twice within a month should naturally give not only Air Peace but the Federal Government and every patriotic Nigerian some concern.
Although one must factor in the value of the Naira that has been rising in the last three weeks or so; that alone cannot justify what is happening with regard to these air fares. There is no doubt that if Air Peace had not come with lower fares, the foreign airlines would have on their own decided to be so magnanimous to slash their fares the way they have done. At any rate, they do not have any reason to, after all they are business entities operating in Nigeria solely for profit motive. But we should understand that they will operate in our country the way we want them to. If we want them to obey our laws, they will comply, and if we give them the latitude to operate as they wish, they will do likewise.
This is where I feel sufficiently concerned.
Air Peace has been shouting loud
and clear that although these fare reductions were primarily aimed at it, they would ultimately hurt Nigeria. The airline’s chairman and chief executive officer, Allen Onyema, said “If they take out Air Peace prematurely, this country will pay dearly for it 10 times over, billions will be lost, there will be another heavy strain on the naira.” He added that It’s a very devilish conspiracy”.
“All of a sudden, (foreign) airlines are underpricing, below the cost, it’s not up to one month, an airline was advertising $100, another one $305, $350. Fill up the entire aircraft and carry people on the wings, it’s not even enough to buy your fuel. So, why are they doing that? Their governments are supporting them because Nigeria has been a cash cow for everybody.”
The Federal Government must be interested in this allegation that is grave, if true; especially as it may seem harmless to the uninitiated about the aviation sector who may assume that competition is always positive. I hear even the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) frowns at certain rock-bottom fares in the sector. It would be nice if the Federal Government follows up on the matter as it promised. And it must ensure that only credible persons represent Nigeria at any forum the matter is tabled if it must get to that. We cannot leave the matter in the hands of the same officials who had been silent over the years despite the imbalance in the Bilateral Air Service Agreement( BASA) between
Nigeria and the United Kingdom.
I am particularly worried because Air Peace is not the first Nigerian airline to fly Lagos to London. Before the airline’s maiden flight on March 30, some local airlines had travelled that route with varying degrees of success. But they no longer do. These included Virgin Nigeria which started the route with only an Airbus A340-300 aircraft on June 28, 2005. Four years later, it terminated operations. Arik Air soon followed on December 15, 2008 with an Airbus A340-500 aircraft wet-leased from Hi Fly. It eventually stopped, under the receivership of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, AMCON, following financial challenges.
Med-View Airline became the last indigenous carrier to operate on the route in 2017.
That means it is only the foreign airlines that have been reaping from this lucrative route in the last seven years. How come? Is this the result of their competence, better customer relations, the type and quality of their aircraft, services, etc. or what? We need to find out that they did not unfairly muzzle out the Nigerian airlines from the Lagos-London route the way Air Peace is crying they want to suffocate it.
One must feel sufficiently concerned given, for instance, the experience of Air Peace, even in securing approval for Gatwick Airport. Onyema, said negotiations for the route had been a long process and he had initially negotiated for any of London’s prime airports like Heathrow 2, 3, 4 or 5. It was when all of these failed that he had to accept the Gatwick Airport option.
Even after that, it took almost two weeks for Gatwick Airport to officially welcome Air Peace. It is however heartwarming that the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, although welcomed the belated welcome, he made it clear to them that this ought to have come earlier.
All of these may be a pointer to what Air Peace may eventually be encountering on that route, with time. But it should not be discouraged. Just as the Federal Government must be ready to support it even if it means applying the principle of reciprocity as may be permitted under best practices in the aviation sector.
As Sindy Foster, principal managing partner at Avaero Capital Partners, reportedly told ‘Vanguard’ after Air Peace’s maiden flight, it was long overdue for a Nigerian airline to operate in the London route. “The Bilateral Air Service Agreement, BASA, between UK and Nigeria has been lopsided for too long. This isn’t just beneficial to the aviation industry, the reduction in fares, by increased capacity and competition, is beneficial for passengers. A Nigerian airline flying this route will also be beneficial for the Nigerian economy.” It keeps the money within unlike the foreign airlines that must repatriate their profits.
However, one of the things we must have learnt from these significant air fare reductions is that sometimes this thing is not always about demand and supply. It is not just about economics. Other extraneous considerations sometimes come into play and displace economic considerations. The exorbitant fares that Nigerians paid for this lucrative route, one of the busiest in the world, before Air Peace pulled the wool off our eyes was just sheer exploitation that the supervisory agencies in Nigeria were, unfortunately, either ignorantly oblivious of, or simply chose to be blind to.
Unfortunately, when some of us say that yes, the Naira may be troubled, it is not to the extent that we see in
certain sectors of the economy, some Bretton Woods economists try to make it look like we don’t know what we are saying.
All said, what Air Peace needs now is encouragement. However, as Foster said: “Service is a product differentiator, and a high level of service, both inflight service and across operational services, are highly regarded by passengers. Air Peace has entered into a very competitive market and it would need to operate to an international standard in every aspect of its operations, it requires an elevation of standards.”
Air Peace must also realise that international routes are more competitive and there is no room for laxity. The airline must be ready to demonstrate its typical Nigerian hospitality to differentiate it from others.
Keyamo also spoke of wet-leasing of aircraft that many airlines are benefitting from but which Nigeria cannot due to past abuses. The Federal Government must do the needful to make Nigeria airlines benefit from such initiative. Air Peace has paid its dues, using its substance to bail out the country in times of trouble. Its present travails in the hands of hawks in the aviation sector should be payback time.
With a lucrative route like Nigeria -U.K., we should not be timid in lawfully promoting and protecting our own. Everybody else does the same, and understandably so. The aviation sector is a trillion dollar economy that represents 3.5 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) worldwide (2.7 trillion US dollars); it has created 65 million jobs globally.
