The Federal Government’s plan to buy 30 aircraft for domestic airlines, as intervention to shield the sector from further decline or failure, has again come under criticism.
Some airline operators and industry experts say the project cannot work because the necessary infrastructure and manpower to support it are not in place.
Some other industry watchers also doubt government’s sincerity in making the proposal.
Analysts who spoke to BusinessDay, pointed out that manpower and maintenance hangars to support the operations of the aircraft are currently in short supply, or lacking altogether, adding that the sector’s woes may be compounded when that number of aircraft ( 30 ) are delivered without maintenance facilities or operational fleets.
This, they said, would lead the airlines to incur huge bills in foreign exchange, to service their aircraft abroad, while the inability to do so, could cause the ventures to fail.
The experts advised that government should rather invest in training of personnel and building of maintenance hangars, where operators could carry out all checks (A-D) on aircraft, instead of taking them abroad.
For instance, to carry out a ‘C-Check’ on a Boeing 737 aircraft abroad, analysts said, costs between $500,000 and $1.5m, depending on the level of C-Check.
John Ojikutu, a retired airport commandant said: “If government must float a national carrier, in addition to deploying 30 aircraft to the industry, the airlines would need at least 100 captains and co-pilots.
“Where would the new airlines get these, when the present ratio of Nigerian pilots to foreign pilots flying for most domestic airlines is 1:4?
“Where would the aircraft engineers and technicians come from, and where will the airlines use as hangars for base maintenance?”
Ojikutu explained that it would take the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT) Zaria, the neglected government-owned aviation school, at least three years to produce a licensed pilot and another three or four years, to get him mature enough to fly medium-sized passenger aircraft, only as a co-pilot.
Ojikutu said statistics showed that Nigeria had been relegated in the marketplace of airline pilots and engineers, by government’s poor attitude to training.
“This explains why most airlines have a greater number of foreign pilots. For instance, Dana
Airlines, at the public hearing, gave a figure of 16 pilots (11 foreigners and 5 Nigerians), 14 Co-pilots (13 foreigners and 1 Nigerian). The story is not different from other airlines”.
Dele Ore,a former director in the defunct Nigeria Airways, also said that the minimum and maximum age limits of 60 years and 65 years, set for flight crew, by the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) was being strictly implemented.
He added however, that the training aspect was not being implemented, as the ageing pilots and engineers and those deficient in current technologies or methods, were not being planned for.
Ore said that for instance, many Nigerian engineers had training requirements for aircraft like the Boeing 727-200 and 737 which are already being phased out, due to high cost of maintenance, but government has no plans for their training on the newer aircraft which are now dominating the fleet of Nigerian carriers.
“The result of lack of training is that you hear of flight cancellations all the time. Of course, they will not give you the reason, they will say due to operational reasons, but if they cannot raise and train the crew, the airplanes can’t fly themselves.
“Remotely, there is a shortage of crew, and the problem is going to be more acute as the years progress, because more and more crew would be approaching the age of retirement, and if replacements are not readily available, it means that the shortage would get progressively worse, as the years roll by”.
Also speaking, Amos Akpan, managing director of Capital Airlines, said government needs to consider so many variations such as ‘insurance premium, cost of maintenance and cost of manpower training’ before deploying the aircraft, in order to avoid bigger problems in the industry.
“The concept that government supplying new aircraft (30) to Nigerian airlines will force the airfares down is faulty.
“The effect of newer aircraft on airlines operating cost, manifests in savings, through lesser fuel burn (fuel efficiency); and less frequent repairs (low cost of maintenance in terms of frequency of repairs). But the money an airline saves from newer aircraft (one to five years) in fuel efficiency and less frequent repairs, is spent on cost of purchase or lease of newer aircraft, cost of manpower training and insurance.
“One to five-year old aircraft are 40 percent costlier to purchase or lease, than six to ten-year old aircraft. Certified personnel rated on that type of aircraft need to be trained in class and on-line in the field, and the higher the value of the aircraft, the higher the insurance premium.
“Since the aircraft will not be given free to domestic airlines, the lease rate will be high. Our reason for newer aircraft must be clear, so that we don’t lose focus on priorities like maintenance culture”, he said.
Joe Obi, special adviser on media, to the minister of Aviation, had confirmed that government was getting the aircraft directly from the manufacturer’s, with funds from the Aviation Intervention Fund, in conjunction with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Bank of Industry (BoI).
Obi said one of the modalities to accessing the aircraft, would be bank guarantee, adding that any airline that has no guarantee would not benefit from it.
“Government is not happy with the way the first intervention fund was disbursed and used ,hence there is need to be more prudent and save the industry”, he had said.
Second-hand Boeing 737s such as the B737-200 etc can cost as little as $3 million. The newer B737s can cost from $50 million to $80 million.
Already, government is in talks with Boeing, Bombardier and other aircraft manufacturers, to shop for aircraft for the airlines.
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