The manging director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, Captain Rabiu Hamisu Yadudu has disclosed of plans to decentralise essential operations and management of FAAN.

Speaking during a recent courtesy visit to the office of the League of Airport and Aviation Correspondents, LAAC in Lagos, Capt Yadudu said a lot of things are concentrated around the headquarters which the authority cannot be macro-managing from the headquarters.

Yadudu said the decentralization shows the management is not ready to hold into to power.

He pointed out that even, the welfare of their staff will be decentralised with the managers responsible.

According to him: “We will also ensure accountability. If your manager is messing up, it is easier for you to know. Also, we have started the scholarship exercise for all our staff and the best five students in each five regions will get the scholarship and FAAN will make sure we fund their university education.”

FAAN MD stated that the Authority is working on the local runway.

He queried the essence of having two runways if they cannot be used.

The FAAN boss explained that FAAN will work in Akure, Borno, Sokoto airports this year and next year it will work in Port Harcourt, Benin and Yola.

On agitations for Nigerian airports to operate 24 hours service, the Managing Director of FAAN, said the authority wants all airports to operate 24/7 days a week because it is a business for FAAN.

” We earn our revenue from that operations; we are a service delivery agency, but the challenge is will the 24/7 pay for itself? Somebody has to pay for the 24/7 operations. Will the business pay for itself? If we open an airport with just only three landings, FAAN will close down. No organisation in the world will do that. Even, if you go to Europe, you will find out that many airports are sunrise to sunset. You can operate an airport even for sunrise to midday so that everybody that knows should go around that window”.

Yadudu explained further that FAAN cannot operate in an airport that it can not breakeven with because it is already challenged.

In his words: “We want 24/7 days airport, but we need to know if the business will be sustainable. At first, some of the businesses may look as if they are sustainable even for the next two years. So, somebody must be ready to have the business model to sustain 24/7 operations. I cannot commit to 24/7 operations when you are not coming.

“One airline came to us that they wanted to operate 24/7 operations to Yola and wanted FAAN to extend the time for them, but I told them that we will need a lot of money to do that. An airline may decide to open a route today and dispatch just one aircraft there, but for FAAN, the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) and others, will have to mobilise personnel, ensure efficiency and fix facilities that can be move in and out. Sometimes, fuelers and handlers will be needed. We don’t want a situation whereby an airline will start a route now and in the next few months, it will stop such due to lack of passengers. Then, who will pay for all we have gone through”?

Yadudu noted that FAAN is a business; as it pays salaries of workers and wages and as such has to be sure that it will breakeven when it operates 24 hours service do that.

He sympathised with the airlines on the scarcity of Jet A1, adding that if anything affects the airlines, it will affect FAAN and every other thing or organization in the industry.

He said the airlines are struggling to remain in business .