The Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) has expressed dismay over the threat by the Chairman of Senate Committee on Aviation, Senator Smart Adeyemi that foreign airlines might be invited to operate domestic service in Nigeria if local airlines do not stop incessant flight delays and cancellations.
AON in a statement signed by its President and Chairman of Azman Air, Alhaji Yunusa Abdulmunaf and other airline operators, including Max Air, United Nigeria Airlines, Ibom Air, Arik Air, Aero Contractors, Air Peace, Overland Airways, Green Africa and Dana Air, said such comments by the Senate Committee Chairman only served to aggravate sentiments and sent out the wrong message to passengers and the general public.
Adeyemi made the threat recently in Lagos, during a joint oversight visit by the Senate and House of Representatives Committees on Aviation to the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).
However, in the statement, AON explained that commercial airlines globally, Nigeria inclusive, were set up with strict adherence to flight times.
The AON noted that the schedules are put in place not only for the benefit of customers, but also to allow airlines maximise the use of their aircraft in order to meet up with their laid out targets over a period of time and ensure their safety and sustainability, adding that it is therefore not in the interest of any airline, whether in Nigeria or anywhere else, to delay or cancel flights as this has severe financial and image consequences.
“For these reasons, delays and cancellations are therefore the last thing any airline wants. While flight delays and cancellations occur all over the world, it is however instructive to note that in Nigeria, 80 per cent of the causes of delays and cancellations are due to factors that are neither in the control of airlines nor caused by them,” the operators said.
They also stressed that they operate in a very hostile environment with infrastructure decay and inefficiencies.
“This is why AON invites the public to be aware that airlines operating in Nigeria are forced to operate in an environment that is wrought with infrastructure deficiencies that are highly disruptive to normal schedule reliability and on time performance.
“Any airline in the world forced to operate under the domestic Nigerian circumstances would be bogged down by delays that they have no control over,” the statement said.
The operators itemised the causes of flight delays to include weather and explained that due to the lack of basic navigational and visual aids at most airports across the country, airlines are forced to delay flights unnecessarily, waiting for visibility to improve either at departure or destination airports.
“This is the major cause of delays in the months of October to March every year (with the harmattan dust haze and fog) and this impacts the entire system significantly.
“Almost every morning, the first flights to several destinations are delayed, affecting the schedule of the airline for the rest of the day. This issue of lack of navigational and visual aids at most of the airports in the country accounts for more than 50 per cent of the delays in the system, for which airlines unfairly always take the fall.
“This would easily be avoidable if the requisite infrastructure was put in place across the network of airports. Thankfully, airlines will never jeopardise safety, but will rather choose to wait for weather conditions to improve or be forced to cancel flights if the situation persists,” the operators said.
The AON also identified inadequate aircraft parking space due to congested aprons — both domestic terminals in Lagos; restrictions caused by Sunset Airports, which refers to the airports without night landing facilities; delays due to very important person (VIP) movement, which is the practice of closing the airspace for security reasons to allow the president, vice president or other VIPs to either depart or arrive and frequent bird strikes and Foreign Object Damage (FOD).
They further explained that bird strikes and foreign objects damage many aircraft during landing, taxiing or takeoff at airports across the country, thereby forcing the aircraft to be parked abruptly until a replacement can be provided to operate a flight.
The operators also identified unavailability and ever rising cost of aviation fuel; unavailability of Forex for spare parts and maintenance; delays from Customs in clearing of Safety critical spare parts; poor air traffic flow; inadequate Check-in Counters and others as the major factors responsible for flight delays and cancellations.
