Without taking right for left we
need to talk about what it means to add real value to an aviation system. Without
doubt remodeling of airport buildings and terminals is fantastic but thinking
of it as a real solution is the same as a plastic surgery, if the person has a dysfunctional
nervous system, looking good would not fix it.
Airline operations are no doubt
the nervous system of any functional aviation system and this makes the
wellbeing of airline operators crucial to the success of the aviation system at
large.
The percentage of the population
that has access to aviation services is one of the most crucial measures of the
potential and actual success of a civil aviation system. This access includes
both financial access and surface access.
The level of confidence the
population has on the aviation system is also important. This confidence level
needs to be driven up to a level that most of the population would rather fly
if they have to consider their options provided all other conditions including
financial considerations are the same. This article is being written in 2015
when we are 3 years (tens of thousands of take offs and landings) from the last
plane crash and a lot of confidence has been built in those 3 years. The
monitoring effort of the NCAA that has produced high level of compliance which
has produced our safe sky track record needs to be sustained, staffed where
weak and developed when necessary.
We are doing bad enough with surface
access as many of the distance covered by road to access airports should be a
reason for more airports but with the wellbeing of airlines and policies to aid
profitable airline operations not yet available, it opens the way for us to see
how much work we have left to do. In the southwest for example people still
travel for 3-4 hours from Ogun, Oyo and Osun states to access the Lagos airport
for both domestic and International flights and others in Ondo and Ekiti States
would just travel by road for their local journeys because of how long they
would need to travel for to get to the nearest airport.
The major talking point would
however be the financial access. With minimum wage in Nigeria at ₦18,000 and
average ticket price for a 1 hour flight being ₦13,000, we can imagine just how
much of our 170 000 000 people can genuinely afford to fly. The most compelling
analysis perhaps would be from the fact that 70% of our population live below
the poverty line and can barely afford a dollar a day talk more of savings less
talk of having anywhere to fly to. This statistics shows that the overall
performance of the aviation system is not independent of the economy of the
nation as a whole.
But our aviation decision makers
must immediately begin to answer the question of what aviation in Nigeria can
do to adjust in order to make the best of the remaining 30% while we wait and
work with the government to increase that percentage where we can.
One of the ways we can do this is
by working with the average price of ticket for a 1 hour flight. I we set the
benchmark at ₦8500 for example, we must then make policies that would ensure that
selling tickets at plus or minus ₦1000 of this benchmark is profitable for
airline operators.
One of the actions the government
needs to take is to ensure compliance with some of the policies we currently
have on ground. An example of such is the zero duty of importation of aircraft parts;
this policy needs to be monitored to make sure it is effectively practiced. This
policy should also be extended to every importation made by airlines to
directly support aviation operations especially for items that are genuinely not
locally produced.
According to many records,
airlines in Nigeria spend around 70% of their income on fueling. This leaves
only 30% of the operator’s income to cope with its other expenses and you can
be sure this is great danger to profitability. Government can solve this
problem directly by ensuring local production of aviation fuel or making an
arrangement to subsidize the commodity for airlines with the later not being a
lasting solution if the rest of the economy is to be considered.
Without doubt the choice of the
aviation minister in the next administration is crucial and needs to be taken
for technical and not political reasons. The job of that aviation minister
would also be beyond establishing a national carrier as the challenges in this
write up are real and attending to them would add real value to our aviation system.
Temitope Bolarinwa
April 2015
