The Managing Director and CEO of Aero Contractors has confirmed that many business class passengers have decided to stop patronizing schedule commercial airlines and now go for private jet services due to high cost of ticket, the uncertainty of fights, which have been eroded by delays and cancellations.
Sanusi who was head of the Ministerial Task Force Committee on illegal private charter operations and related matters, which recently submitted its report, told THISDAY in exclusive interview that passengers who hitherto fly business class have chosen to travel by charter services, especially when more than one person is travelling because business class tickets are high and schedule flights are not reliable, as flights can delay and be cancelled at any time.
Sanusi told THISDAY, “We have seen an increase in the use of private jets recently because many people if they can afford to add a few millions of naira on top rather than going on a business class they probably will chose to use private jet charter services because the reliability of schedule commercial flights is not certain. And they feel that the airlines are cancelling a lot of flights and all that. So, that actually contributed to the lower number of people who travelled by commercial flights last year.
Sanusi also admitted that all Nigerian airlines record high number of flight delays and cancellations and explained that airlines scheduling contribute to these delays and also the airport infrastructure and weather.
According to him, flight delays and cancellations in Nigeria have become systemic and to significantly curb flight delays, there should be overhaul of airport infrastructure and the airlines must review their operation standards.
“You cannot be more efficient than the system you operate in. If I am overtaxed, if I am overregulated, if I am restricted by infrastructure because of landing at night, or I cannot land at night, what else can I do? I am left with very, very few things to do to innovate or to organically stimulate the growth or bring the passengers in. Yes, we can debate it, that the airlines must do something to grow the passenger, but you can’t be more efficient than the environment you are operating in. And if there are already limiting factors in that environment, there are very few things that you can do to innovate out of it,” he said.
Sanusi also identified other factors that cause flight delays and pointed out that both airlines, airports and weather contribute to this intractable problem.
“When you talk about flight delays, there are couple of factors that can cause flight delays. Mostly, airlines unable to match their capacity can cause flight delays; let’s say I have three aircraft, I will maximise the capacity of those three aircraft and I have an AOG (aircraft on ground), that will definitely translate into a reduction of close to 60% of my capacity. Which means that flights will be cancelled or delayed. And we have already published a schedule. So, the baseline is that capacity, that is the baseline. If Nigerian airlines have a lot of aircraft, definitely you will see less flight delays and cancellations. We are blessed with good weather, not as in other parts of the world.
“We have good weather, yes definitely we have thunderstorms and dust haze that cause flight delays and cancellations. But not like in some countries where you have snow storms that cancel flights for a long period of time or tornadoes and the rest. So, we do have thunderstorms and the rest. Yes, weather contributes to flight delays and cancellations, AOG and then your own particular airline’s integrity of operations. The way you schedule your aircraft, you must have to create a buffer,” he said.
Sanusi explained that an airline will find it difficult to keep one of its aircraft on standby because such decision would be too expensive for the airline. Aircraft makes money when it is in the air. And this means that an airline has to deploy all its airworthy aircraft but when an aircraft in the fleet is grounded, it affects the schedule and this contributes in flight delays and cancellation.
“So, you must optimize your operation and then you must make sure that there is a rescue plan at any time. But if you have three airplanes and then one is AOG, you have 50% capacity. That is the problem. But if you have more airplanes, if airlines have more airplanes, they have more flexibility and they have more room for rescuing and then recovering from delays and cancellations due to AOGs. But 90% of the delays and cancellations that you see around the country is because of the AOG of an airplane and the capacity of those airlines probably don’t have that flexibility to rescue that AOG in a good time,” he said.
Also, on the high fares, Sanusi noted that although there are a lot of taxes in the fares and the high cost of aviation fuel and operational costs have to be built into the cost of the ticket, but observed that fares are also determined by supply and demand; so when the demand is high, like in Nigeria now that the capacity is limited, airfares can skyrocket, which has been the situation since the last two years.
“All those prices that you see that are quite high are called demand. The airline has seen that there is a lot of demand going on. It is going to happen during the Easter period. Our Eastern brothers are going to go to the East and the demand will be high and the tickets will be high. And it is wrong. This is not how it has been done. This is not a sustainable way to grow an industry. I believe when there is a festival or when there is an event, that is when you should even reduce your price so that you can get more people to travel. So that what you are doing is, you are bringing new people, new entrants into flying experience,” he said.
The Manging Director of Aero Contractors further explained that when airlines bring down their fares during the high season like Christmas, more people who hitherto travelled by bus may experience air travel locally and that may encourage them to travel by air more often.
“When you bring down the fares, you will organically be increasing your base. But in the short run, you are thinking, oh, let’s get as much as we can get at this period. But what you are doing is you are limiting your opportunities because now people that would have entered and have an experience of flying will go and enter the bus. But if you reduce fares, more people will patronise you.
“When everybody was increasing price during last Christmas season, Aero Contractors reduced price to N80,000 at that period. And what did we do? Why did we do that? We wanted to give opportunity to people that would have probably gone to enter a bus to have the experience of flying, to understand that we sell safety and speed. And we have seen that a lot of people have experienced the flight and would like to fly. So, I think that is the way to organically grow the passenger base in a sustainable manner,” he said.
There is significant reduction of the number of people who travel by air and this is attributed to the deteriorating economic situation in Nigeria and the hiccups in flight operations.
