The founder of United Nigeria Airlines, Prof Obiora Okonkwo has said that the foreign exchange policy of the federal government, the domestication of the Cape Town Convention (CTC) Practice Direction which allows Nigerian airline operators to have access to aircraft dry lease has helped to reduce the burden domestic operators previously had to contend with.
Okonkwo stated this in his address during the celebration of the airline’s fourth anniversary held in Abuja yesterday.
“The foreign policy of the Tinubu administration has been of tremendous advantage to the airline industry. Before he came into power, it was a nightmare for us to be able to convert naira to foreign currencies to pay our obligations. We lost a whole lot of contracts. We lost a lot of vendors.
“Because you have your money stuck in naira in the bank, and you don’t get the forex that you need. You can’t even go and help yourself somewhere. So, it’s a different story. You don’t need to track funds…for the foreign operators; the government has cleared that, almost a billion US dollars.
“It has opened up a new window for better relationships. Our reputation and integrity in the international aviation industry is better now. So we are happy with it.
“Those policies…the forex policy, the policy of domesticating Cape Town Convention, and then the new practice direction, all those things actually had helped to reduce so many of the burden domestic operators hitherto grappled with,” he said.
Notwithstanding, Okonkwo appealed to the government to create a window for airlines to access funds at a reduced rate.
“One thing that will help the growth of this industry will be for the government to develop the programme that will give the window access to local operators to a single-digit loan.
“Government must realise that access to credit is very important to us operators because we are competing with people who have access to loans at 3, 5 per cent maximum, and aviation is a global village and we can’t compete with them,” he said.
Moreover, Okonkwo made a case for a reduction of multiple charges.
“They need to cut down on the charges the operators pay different agencies of government; in all they are about twenty. The margin of this business is very low and if you have to meet all those charges to the NCAA, NAMA, FAAN, you are left with nothing. It’s affecting us, we need to have more money to be able to develop, expand and then also improve the working environment for our staff,” he declared.
Furthermore, Okonkwo said the biggest challenge facing the airlines are passengers, who, according to him are hard to hard top please.
“I can tell you that our biggest challenge as operators are the passengers. The passengers whom we strive day and night to service and please are the same people who will turn around and become unruly for no just reason.
They overemphasise the issues of delays. Delays happen in any part of the world but we need to work together with the press to educate the travelling public about their rights and obligations. We know what we owe them as operators.
“We over-bend ourselves as operators to please them. We often do beyond what local flight operators do in any part of the world to satisfy our passengers but despite all that their attitude and behaviour put a lot of stress on the operators,” he said.
Also speaking, the executive director and chief operating officer of the airline, Mr Osita Okonkwo said the airline had opened more routes across the country.
He said the carrier had recently added Benin, Kano and Sokoto on its route while plans are in the works to operate to 25 destinations by 2026.
