Why We’re Yet To Launch Our International Flights -Air Peace
Air
Peace has blamed aviation politics for the delay in starting its flights to
long-haul routes, including London, Guangzhou-China, Houston, Mumbai,
Johannesburg, Dubai and Sharjah.
Speaking
at the 5th Aviation Stakeholders’ Forum organised by the Federal Ministry of
Transport in Abuja on Thursday, Air Peace Chief Operating Officer, Mrs.
Oluwatoyin Olajide said authorities of most of the international destinations
the carrier had been designated to operate to were either deliberately
foot-dragging in processing its application or imposing frustrating conditions
to discourage it from flying into their domains.
Some
of the destination countries, she said, responded to the airline’s application
only after about two years.
Where
the destination countries reluctantly approved the airline’s application to fly
into their domains, Olajide regretted, impossible charges were imposed to
frustrate and discourage it from acting on such approval.
The
high charges imposed on Nigerian airlines by other nations, she said, were
unfortunately not responded to back home. The foreign airlines were rather
pampered in Nigeria and given approval to operate to multiple destinations.
She
dismissed claims that domestic airlines lacked the capacity to take advantage
of the Bilateral Air Service Agreements (BASA) Nigeria signed with different
countries.
In
demonstration of its capacity, she said, Air Peace was at the moment
consistently operating into 14 domestic and five regional destinations,
including Accra, Banjul, Dakar, Freetown and Monrovia.
Olajide
maintained that Air Peace had capacity to operate into all destinations
approved for it, announcing that the airline was concluding arrangements to
launch its Dubai and Sharjah services before the end of the year.
In
apparent response to the claim that some foreign airlines operating in Nigeria
had offered 20 pilots jobs, the Air Peace COO said the carrier had so far
directly offered jobs to more than three thousand Nigerians, besides impacting
the nation’s economy in many other respects.
She
also identified the inability of airlines to operate into most of the nation’s
airports once it was sunset as a great disservice to the operational capacity
of the carriers.
Speaking
on the suspended national carrier project, which Air Peace had criticised as
being out of fashion and a drain on public resources, Olajide wondered whether
it would be fair for the Federal Government to confer the planned airline with
advantages not available to the existing private carriers.
No comments