Aero Contractors recently made history by undertaking the maintenance of a Boeing B737 Classic aircraft at the C-check level. The chief executive of the company, Capt Ado Sanusi described the feat as a major milestone for Nigeria that would engender local content in the aviation sector.
How far have you gone with the Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) project?
Approved Maintenance Organisation has been given the nod by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) for Aero to conduct C-checks. I have always said that Aero Contractors Maintenance Organisation has been in existence for about 58 years and it has been conducting checks and it has been improving. Over the years it has done remarkably well in maintaining small body aircraft like Bombardier Dash-8, Hawkers and other private jets.
But there has always been a limiting factor for Aero Contractors to perform C-checks on Boeing B737 aircraft. So we now had a comprehensive look at what is needed so that we could achieve the great feat of carrying out C-check maintenance on Boeing B737 classics. Finally, we got all our people and every other thing ready and send them to NCAA to look at everything for approval. What we needed was to meet the specification for conducting C-check on bigger aircraft, the Boeing B737 classic, which include B737-300, B737-400 and B737-500.We have been conducting C-check on smaller aircraft before now, but a C-check on Boeing B737 is very, very important because B737 is one of the most popular airplanes in Nigeria and actually in Africa. So we are very confident that this achievement will go a long way, and it is a game changer in aviation industry in Nigeria. It is an achievement that we look at as a big improvement in the aviation sector. So the benefit is not only to Aero but the entire aviation sector in Nigeria.
Before now people doubted whether you have the facility and expertise to do C-check?
People doubt our capability to do C-check? I don’t think they doubt us. I think they doubt the NCAA. This is because NCAA is mandated by civil aviation law to give license and to authorise companies to fly and maintain aircraft. So if NCAA has the mandate by law to do it; then they should be able to give the license for airline to fly and also maintain airplanes and we have fulfilled the conditions and they have given us the mandate.
I don’t think people should doubt, but to those people who are doubting, because there will be people that will doubt, it is very good to doubt and it is very good to criticise, but I will tell them that we are not stopping with NCAA. Before the end of the first half of next year we will get (European Aviation Safety Agency(EASA) approval and the people that doubt can continue to doubt. But before the end of next year we will get FAA (US Federal Aviation Administration) approval. These are the targets that we intend to achieve. So before the end of the first half of next year we will get FAA approval and before the end of the first quarter of next year we will get EASA approval. So we will be a maintenance organsiation that will be approved by the two major regulators in the world, which are FAA and EASA. I think that by then people who doubt will stop doubting.
In the area of maintenance are you going to partner any organisation?
We have entered into a lot of Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs). We have entered into a lot of agreements with tooling companies, spare parts companies. I am sure you are aware with our agreement with A J Walters. They will supply us with tooling; they will supply us with spare parts. They will support our MRO and it is with their support that we achieved what we have achieved so far. We have also entered into MoU with South Africa Airways Technical. As I had said in my previous interviews, because this is our first C-check on Boeing 737, we would like to have some people from outside our company to come and look at the quality control of what we are doing and recommend what needs to be done if there is anything to be done differently.So, we are in touch with South Africa Airways Technical and they are already on ground with the quality control advisers throughout this project and they will be with us for a long time until we get experienced Nigerians that will continue with the quality control and the reason is that South Africa Airways Technical has done thousands of C-checks so they know the quality. And we are not producing for Nigerian standard; we are producing for international standard so we need somebody that will come and do quality control for us and advise us.Again, we have an agreement with Ethiopian Airlines Maintenance and according to the MoU we signed with them, they will give us specialised manpower, tooling and also see where they can support our MRO. As I have said several times, MRO is not something you said you want to build and you just build it, like a hotel. But MRO is something that must be started somewhere and because of the complex nature, it has to start somewhere and then develop into a big facility. All the big MROs you have seen started from somewhere, like Lufthansa Technic and others.
Last time we spoke you were talking about extending the maintenance hangar. How far have you gone with the job?
It has been done. It is part of the prerequisite for the certification to make sure that the airplane is enclosed in the hangar. We have extended the hangar and we did it in a very efficient and cost effective manner.
Have you informed other airlines that Aero is now certified to do C-check maintenance and are you getting any response?
I have concluded a meeting with an airline and they desperately wanted us to move their aircraft in for maintenance immediately after ours, but I told them that we need to do two of our aircraft before we do for a third party. Yes, we will extend maintenance to other airlines and we will sensitise the airline industry that we have a solution for maintenance here. We want to have a one-stop shop for maintenance for the airlines in the country. So if your aircraft is due for C-check you bring it to us and we will look at your package and then give you a bill. After that we discuss; because we are in the airline business and we know that the airline business is very, very challenging, especially when you have limited resources. So we will work with your resources with a bank’s guarantee and make sure we deliver the C-check to you at reduced cost.
We also have AJ Walters in our office so you can order spares from them and you can order materials like consumables; you can order anything from them while you are with us. We also have South Africa Airways Technical and Ethiopia Airlines Maintenance in case there is any specialised service you might need.
In future we are also looking at establishing a paint shop which will be located somewhere in the northern Nigeria. So that when we finish the maintenance of the aircraft we will fly it to the paint shop, let’s say in Kaduna and we paint the aircraft. Kaduna is conducive because it has the presence of Dornier in the 80s and 90s, where we have a lot of local talent. The environmental conditions in Kaduna are very good for painting so we do the painting there. We will establish proper hangar which is installed with extractors and possibly heaters; although Kaduna is a little bit hot. That will be the next phase of our MRO.
Before now there are other maintenance facilities in Nigeria that carry out maintenance up to C-check?
Let me make it very clear. When we were making this pronouncement that we are the first. We are actually the first to do C-check on the Boeing B737 Classic. We are not the first to do C-check in the country. We do C-check on light aircraft. We have been doing C-check on the Bombardier Dash-8 and I am sure Overland Airways has been doing C-check on its ATR aircraft series. So there have been so many maintenance facilities that have been doing C-check on smaller aircraft. But this is the first time in the history of this country that we are doing C-check on a B737 Classic. And Boeing 737 Classic is the main machine in the country and 90 percent of failures of airlines are because they could not afford to pay for C-check for the Classic airplane. So that is why we are talking so much about this maintenance.
And look at it; every airline that is successful in the world started with its own maintenance organization, doing its own maintenance, trying to control cost ad some successful ones had seen that that maintenance can also be commercialised. This is the way Ethiopia Airlines did it, South Africa Airways, Royal Jordanian, Lufthansa, the British Airways and others. So most of these airlines started like that. That is the only way airlines can survive because I don’t have to fly my airplane to the US or Europe or Middle East to go and do maintenance when I can do it right here, at my door steps and control the cost.
With this facility you can maintain all your aircraft from A to C check and you can only take them out when you want to do D-check?
Yes, we can do all the C-checks here. There was even a time we contemplated bringing in our aircraft we sent out for maintenance, one in France and two in Jordan to do the C-check here by ourselves because it doesn’t make sense spending all those monies on them overseas but we realised that we have made a commitment. But that will be the last of our aircraft that we would sent out for C-check maintenance. Henceforth, others will be done here. Some of them have been there over a year. But we are completing some of the C-checks over there to bring them back to fly.
With a maintenance facility up to the level of C-check how is it going to impact on your operations?
In the recovery process of Aero Contractors, in the delicate recovery process that we embarked on when I came on board the airline management as CEO was with the objective to stabilise the airline’s operations to ensure we have some numbers of aircraft operating. And to do that we needed to inject funds so that we could either pay those MROs that have our airplanes and bring them back after maintenance and then fly those airplanes to stabilise our operations. But the amount those MRO facilities were asking was very high. So in the process we decided that it would be easier to take less than half of what we will pay an MRO outside Nigeria to do one C-check to invest it into our own facility and upgrade it to the standard of C-check. That was what we did and we discovered that we still needed cash so we had to look outside the box, did some creative thinking and came up with ways we could raise some funds.
So, we extended the hangar. The extension of the hangar was not that expensive. We looked in-house to see how many personnel that we have. We wanted to know how many had worked on C-check and we noted the number of the staff and we checked it with the number we need. So we called some people whom we hitherto laid off back. Then we checked how many expatriates we needed. We looked at it, debated it and we brought in some expatriates. Some of the expatriates we contacted we told that our engagement with them would be on a call up basis. They will come and spend three to four days, do they job we want them to do and then go back.
So, that was the methodology we used to achieve this. This will allow us have by the end of the year, three Boeing B737 flying. We will also have two Bombardier Dash-8 aircraft, making it a total of five aircraft by December. When we came in we had only one aircraft in operation. In fact, at a time we were almost having known. So that was how we stabilised the operation to three aircraft and started flying between two and three aircraft. So by December we should have five aircraft. So we will come into the market in the December period with five aircraft. With that we will make our presence felt. We are very confident that with this achievement of MRO the recovery process is on solid ground. We hope to bring Aero back to its former status, as one of the first three airlines in Nigeria. We are doing all that with minimal injection of funds.
We looked inwards, looked at the assets that we have, saw which ones we could dispose of and then tried to put the proceed of the asset back into the business. Of course we have extremely dedicated staff. We have very experienced staff. I am grateful to them for all they have done to ensure we are still operating.
What have you done in the helicopter area?
When we came in we had one helicopter flying and we managed to make it. We are also in discussion with Augusta Helicopters, now called Leonardo. We are in discussion with them and we intend to bring one helicopter in on lease for the time being. We have stabilised the helicopter operation. We have about two contracts that are running and for the first time after all these we have put in a bid for three major oil and gas companies to provide them shuttle service. We are confident we will succeed in the bid because we have almost 58 years of experience and with the new relationship we have with Augusta Helicopters, we believe we will take it back up. I am confident that in the next 12 months there will be a lot of changes in the helicopter session. I believe that by the end of the year to the quarter of next year we will have brand new helicopters flying. We will have them on lease first and then start looking at purchase. So we will lease for three to five years, depending on the contract with the oil and gas companies.
When I took over the first thing was to understand where the company is. For the first two to three weeks, we were brainstorming with the management team. This is a company that was under crisis because of the financial distress. We were having meetings on a daily basis with the management team and I said we could not continue to manage the crisis; we must have to chart a way forward on how to get out of the crisis and have recovery plan. That was when the idea from the management team came as one of the staff said, well we could do C-check and another said, we cannot do C-check and I said, if we can; why can’t we? That was when we started the whole idea of upgrading the maintenance facility to do C-check for Boeing Classics.
I realised that the recovery processes depended on getting more airplanes and getting more airplanes depended on either paying for the C-check overseas or doing the C-check ourselves. And because we lack financial resources we must have to do it ourselves. That was how we moved on to the level we are today.
When we wanted to extend the maintenance hangar, there was nobody to do it for us here, so we went to Europe and spoke to another MRO company. We told that company to assist us; that we wanted the extension of our hangar. The CEO of that company came to Nigeria and when he saw what we have, he said it was a brilliant idea; that his company was going to help us and would do everything to support us and said we should sign MoU. We signed MoU and he went back to Europe and on arrival he sent me email and said he was sorry he could not assist us; the reason being that Nigeria is their market; that if they assist us they would lose jobs to our facility and may sack the 400 staff working in the company. “I am sorry, I like you but this is a strict business decision that I am making. We can assist you if you want to loan tools, but we won’t assist you to develop the capacity to do C-check because it will hurt our business,” he said.
I took that as a challenge and I said, okay and I thanked him for his frankness. That was what made me to make up my mind that there was nothing that would stop us from upgrading the facility to C-check. We worked hard and worked day and night and finally got a company that helped us to do the extension and half way through the extension the company disclosed to us that they were the company that built the hangar in the first place. We experienced hurdles at every stage but we are grateful to NCAA. NCAA understood that there was need to have our own home grown MRO.
What is the estimate of the money you could save for other airlines that would want to do their MRO here?
They will save a lot. Normal C-check will cost about $1.6 million and if you add the cost of ferrying the aircraft it will come up to $1.8 to $2 million. So when you use a tow truck to tow you airplane to this place from wherever it is for C-check, you will also have the liberty, because we are going to have customers that will pay us through their banks, so the bank with guarantee can do payment arrangement with us. If we do C-check here in Nigeria it will save the airline at least about 30 percent of the cost of doing it overseas.
Do you think there has been progress in the airline business in the past one year?
In terms of passenger movement I think that there was a slow down because of the economic recession. But, I think that is picking up. I see the aviation industry in this country as a potential market that has not been tapped. We have 180 million Nigerians. If you target 10 percent of that to travel by air; that is a big number by any standard. Do Nigerian airlines stand a chance? Yes, they stand a chance. But the problem is that we must address some basic infrastructural issues; some basic issues of charges. You know that notion, oh, we have been charging this before, I was guilty of it when I was in NAMA (the Managing Director of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency), or that we have been doing this before so we should continue to do it. But the circumstances in which you had been doing it before is not the same circumstances in which you have been doing it now.
So we should also be reviewing the charges. The issue of the prices of Jet A1 has to be reviewed because in the situation where you wake up you learn that they have increased the prices of Jet A1 by 30 percent. And you cannot quickly adjust your ticket prices to reflect that buy you have to buy that Jet A1 at the new prices in order to operate your flights that day; but the passengers have bought their tickets for that day’s flight at the old price. It is only in this country that this is done and I think that there must be a way of introducing the new price regime, recognising that we are in a free market and it is not regulated. This will help you to know the cost of your operation every month, as you know that the price of fuel will not change and if it will change they will notify you.
I think the airlines should come together and pressurise the oil marketers so that they should do the right thing. So that it won’t be something you just wake up and they increase their prices of Jet A1. On the deficiency of infrastructure, even the pipelines that link the airport with Mosimi Depot, if it is revived it will reduce the cost of freighting and this will reflect in the cost of the product. It will also improve safety because all these tankers you see on the road are very dangerous. I believe the Nigerian airlines have a chance. But there is a lot more that needs to be done. I think that the way to go about it is to tackle infrastructural challenges and the charges. They should look into the problems of the parastatals. Are they over bloated? They should reduce the staff.
THISDAY
