The Chief Executive to Officer of Belujane Consult, Mr Chris Aligbe has said that Nigeria is ripe enough to have three formidable airlines
Aligbe stated that no fewer than three formidable airlines can serve the country.
Speaking at the just concluded League of Airport and Aviation Correspondents, LAAC Annual Conference held at the Providence Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos Aligbe noted that no foreign airline can build a hub in the country.
Belujane Consult boss stated that he studied about 25-35 hubs and those hubs are built by the airlines of their country.
He noted that for the upgrade of MMA airport, something less than $500 million will not build the country a world standard airport.
Belujane Consult boss stated that without formidable airlines, Nigeria will never get a hub .
He urged the government to create a forex window that the airlines can access and not palliative or funding.
He said: “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 also those who say, let us have an aviation bank.
An aviation bank, we need to survive. How many airlines in this country can fund or can support an aviation bank? They are not big enough to support an aviation bank. There should be a window, a special window like they do for modern airlines on forex”.
Aligbe explained further that in this case, airlines that have money can go there and access forex, be able to repair their aircraft, lease in the country, and if it is dry leasing, they should be able to pay their lease rentals.
According to him, 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 pull their resources together, we have talked about this over decades.
We have been talking about airlines come, merge, form alliances, do this to expand the scale and
they have not done it.
He observed that: “The country’s 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. And if the airlines have a bleak future, the airports will have a bleak future”.
He expressed his belief in the idea of a national flag carrier, stressing that: “We cannot pull this country up without this. The capitalization is low. Look at airlines, how many partners do they have”.
He stated that AWA has about 12 formidable alliance partners, world-class airlines, including TAAG Angola that are expanding their markets and economies of scale.
