Arik Airlifts over 2000 Nigerians from Troubled CAR

Arik Air

Major domestic operator, Arik Air last Sunday completed the airlift of Nigerians from the troubled Central Africa Republic (CAR) where civil strife is threatening to tear the country apart.
The airline was engaged by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to rescue Nigerians living in that country before the feared full blown war may start.

THISDAY gathered from a reliable source that Arik airlifted over 2000 passengers with two of its Boeing B737-800 through Friday last week to Sunday and brought the Nigerians who were willing to leave the country from CAR’s capital, Bangui to Abuja.

Some industry observers said that before the demise of Nigeria Airways Limited it was carrying out similar emergency airlifting of Nigerians in war torn parts of the world or other emergencies; that Arik taking over this responsibility indicates that the Federal Government may be reappraising its decision of designating Aero Contractors as a national carrier.

Although Arik was engaged by NEMA but not without the knowledge of the Presidency, THISDAY gathered, but this is not the first time Arik is carrying out similar function for the Federal Government.

In 2010 Arik airlifted the Nigerian Super Eagles to South Africa for the World Cup and early last year, it was Arik that also airlifted the victorious Super Eagles who won the Nation’s Cup and recently also the airline took the Nigerian Army contingent to Mali for the Federal Government during the crisis there.

Arik is the only Nigerian airline with about 26 Next Generation aircraft; the nearest airline coming close is Aero with about nine aircraft, which are made of largely classics. So the airline has capacity.

THISDAY spoke to the deputy managing director and head of flight operations of the airline, Captain Ado Sanusi who acknowledged that the airline deployed two of its aircraft to airlift the Nigerians in Bangui without adjusting its operational schedule both in its domestic services, regional and international operations.

“We were contacted by NEMA to deploy our aircraft to help evacuate stranded Nigerians from the Central African Republic and within 24 hours two of our aircraft started the evacuation exercise. We started Friday January 3 through Sunday January 5. We concluded the operations on Sunday,” Sanusi confirmed.

He said there were a lot of children among the passengers and that Immigration and officials of security agencies were involved in the evacuation, as the French Army in charge of the airport in Bangui presided.
Sanusi noted that because Arik has the desired capacity it responds to such emergency calls at short notice.

The airline delivered three modern aircraft last year, including two Airbus A330-200 and one CRJ -1000 and in 2014, the airline is expecting two CRJ -1000 and four Bombardier Q400.
Since 2006 the airline started operation, it had airlifted over 10 million passengers and about three million passengers in 2013.

Sanusi said, “We have the capacity; if we use our airplanes at night we will increase our operational capacity to 70 per cent. We will dedicate four hours for maintenance. Outside Nigeria most of our competitors operate 24 hours. They do not have the challenges that we have.”

The challenge is that many of Nigerian airports have restricted night operation because there is no runway lighting in most of them. If there is airfield lighting Arik and some other domestic carriers could be operating to at least six additional airports in the night. This limits the airlines’ capacity.

source: www.thisdaylive.com