For Nigeria to benefit from the over N200 billion annual revenues generated from international routes, which are dominated by foreign carriers, the nation’s airlines must extend service to long haul destinations.
The Managing Director of Medview Airline, Alhaji Muneer Bankole said the humongous amount of money is taken away from the country as capital flight every year and this is money generated by Nigerians but no Nigerian airline benefit from the market.
Bankole therefore noted that Nigerian airlines should be encouraged by Nigerians and government to become participate in air lifting passengers to international destinations, regretting however, that government has not shown the expected commitment in promoting Nigerian carriers.
The Medview Airline boss was explaining why despite the competition on the route, the airline decided to embark on Lagos-Dubai service.
Bankole also said due to high cost of aviation fuel in Nigeria, it spent about N22 billion on the product in the last five years, adding that in order to streamline its operations it has to lay off 52 staff from both technical and administrative areas of it operation.
Bankole in a press conference at the weekend said the high cost of aviation fuel in Nigeria was depleting airlines’ little profit adding that the airlines were at the receiving end of all the bureaucracies the commodity go through before being sold to operators.
He noted that the prices of the product goes up any time it becomes scarce and due to the hiccups in the supply aviation to different parts of the country there is no uniform, adding that fuel marketers sell at arbitrary prices as the product is deregulated.
“We now buy a litre of aviation fuel at N220 in Lagos but up in the North in places like Maiduguri, it is about N260, that is the unfortunate situation we have found ourselves”, he said.
He said that the perennial shortage of aviation fuel, the gridlock faced in moving the product has become a big clog in the wheel of domestic airlines as they find it difficult to operate smoothly like their counterparts in other parts of the world.
Bankole also said that the price of the product is critical to an airline and also considering the fact that fuel consumption amounts to about 30 percent of the cost of operation for an airline, there is need to quickly find more reliable ways to ensure the supply and distribution of the product.
Bankole also confirmed that the airline has laid off about 52 workers due to the company’s plan to reconsolidate and streamline its operations, remarking that the rationalization exercise is continuous.
Contrary to the reports that the airline leased all its aircraft fleet, the Medview Managing Director said the airline owns the four aircraft currently in its fleet, adding that two of them have been taken out for maintenance.
“Since we started operations in 2012, we have airlifted 2.8 million passengers, we are very committed to our work, we are safety conscious, there had been no serious incident or accident, we are still operating to our Francophone West African countries.
“We currently have four airplanes and Medview owns all because the best way to survive it to own your assets, the aircraft were bought with our money, we were attracted to First Bank by our prudence and with our cash flow, we purchased these aircraft through the bank, we have the bill of sale, in 2015, we bought the B737-500 (5N-BQM) and again, we bought another one christened Abeke n and that is currently being reconfigured from 221 to 242 capacity.
