Aviation: How We Should Roll, By Chris Aligbe

Spokesperson of the defunct Nigeria Airways and chief executive officer of Belujane Konzult, Mr Chris Aligbe, has been consistent in his push for Nigeria to have a national carrier and the local airlines to come together. In this interview, he says it is wishful thinking to believe that foreign airlines will build airport hub in the country and calls on the domestic carriers to form partnerships and benefit from economies of scale.

AIRPORT upgrade

We are upgrading the Murtala Muhammed International Airport. I have a different view. People are quarrelling with the amount. I don’t know what it is. We don’t have the details about what it means. I want to know what the airport will become in terms of capacity, in terms of whatever it is. Because we know that we are moving from five million passengers to 10 million.

I don’t believe that something less than $500 million will build us world standard airport. Go around the world, you will find that you don’t have; the investments are by far more than that. But I don’t want to get into that for now. The only thing is that we are looking forward to it.

Growing the domestic carriers

Every sub-sector is closely linked with each other and so for us today, we are in a vicious circle. Whether you are talking about airlines, if the airlines are not doing well, the airport is not going to do well, the same with ground handling companies and aviation. So we are in a vicious circle.

The critical point for us today, how do we break this vicious circle? For me, the airlines should be the catalysts. You cannot have airports if flights are not going there; the airports will deteriorate and that is what is happening in our country. So I think that if we don’t buoy up our airlines, we will not get to where we are going to be. No airport in this country will become a hub if we depend on foreign airlines to survive. No foreign airlines can build a hub in your country. I studied about 25-35 hubs.

Those hubs are built by the airlines of their country. Without formidable airlines, we will never get a hub.

I believe that our country is ripe enough to have three formidable airlines, not less than three formidable airlines that can serve the country. Yes, we have economic challenges today; there is economic downturn. That is why passengers are declining. If passengers are declining, the airlines have problems and that is what we are seeing.

 Aviation bank

There is something the government will do to help domestic airlines. That thing is not a question of palliative or funding.

For me, there should be a forex window that the airlines can access because they need to pay for lease; they need to pay for maintenance, spares, and everything. They need that forex window. It should be an intentional thing. It must be deliberate.

I do not believe those who say let us have an aviation bank. How many airlines in this country can fund or can support an aviation bank? There has not been enough to support an aviation bank. So, there should be a window, a special window …so that airlines that have money can go there and access forex, be able to repair the aircraft, lease, and if it is dry leasing, they should be able to pay their lease rentals. These are external issues.

Airlines pulling together

The airlines should begin to address their own issues. Unless the airlines come to the point that they have to pull together, the level at which they are operating, there are no economies of scale and with that low level economies of scale they are not going to make it. So, until they pool their resources together, we have been talking about airlines coming together, merge, form alliances, do this to expand the scale, they have not done it.

They should introspect, like they say, they should put the search light on themselves to see where they are and what they are doing wrong. If you go alone, you will die alone. That is the airline industry. It is global. If you find big airlines buying into Lufthansa…they are expanding, as large as they are and they belong to alliances.

So it is economies of scale. But our airlines have not talked about it and they are not thinking about it, except if they start tomorrow to think about it. If they continue the way they are, the future is bleak.

If the airlines have a bleak future, the airports will have a bleak future. So, I think we must break this point. I also do believe today, tomorrow, I believe in a national flag carrier. We cannot pull this country up without it. The capitalisation is low. Look at airlines, how many partners do they have?

Look at AWA; AWA has about 12 formidable partners, alliance partners with world-class airlines. Look at TAAG Angola…they are expanding their markets, economies of scale. How many of our airlines have foreign exchange? How many? Without foreign exchange, you are dependent on what you access from the banks. So I think that if we do not beam on our airlines and wake them up, the industry will continue to suffer. You can build a world-class airport. Other airlines will come into it, but if you don’t have your airline, you will never have a hub. So, I think we are in a vicious circle. And we need to break this vicious circle. And the breaking point is the airline.