Wole Shadare 
Some experts have taken a holistic look at the aviation industry and came up with a verdict that the industry in Nigeria needs urgent rescue to get out of its precarious situation.
Aviation consultant/Chief Executive Officer of Belujane Consult, Mr Chris Aligbe, while featuring alongside other analysts, Mr Toni Ukachukwu and the Secretary General of Aviation Round Table (ART), Mr Olumide Ohunayo, on a television programme at the weekend, said Nigerian carriers would extremely find it difficult to compete with foreign carriers on the international scene because of the point-to-point, describing the method as archaic by operating as a standalone airline.
The trio admitted that the airlines were in intensive care units and called for urgent assistance to operate in a favourable environment. Delving on the international routes by some flag carriers, Aligbe reiterated that no airline would survive with point-to-point.
He, however, lauded the efforts of the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development for taking the Cape Town Convention a notch further with the CTC practice direction that was enforced on September 12, 2024, adding that it had brought back dry-lease arrangements for Nigerian carriers as opposed to wet-lease arrangement that are very costly to the operators.
He said: “In fairness to airline operators, they face many eco – nomic challenges, access to foreign exchange, rising cost of fuel and operations. Everything is stacked against them. From 2017, the issue has been that of wet-lease. “In aviation, we call wet lease the ACMI (Aircraft Maintenance and Insurance).
You don’t use your crew, you don’t pay the insurance and maintenance. Everything they give to you is quite high. What they pay pilots out there is far higher than what is paid to the technical crew and what you even pay for the aircraft.
You have no time to manage it. “What you do is to manage the operations and that is why it is why it is heartwarming that the government, the Vice-President, the Aviation Minister, the Finance Minister and the Chief Judge of the FCT signed the CT Practice Direction.
It was not the CTC that was signed because people make the mistake of saying CTC. CTC was signed and domesticated in 2007. It was during the tenure of Dr Harold Demuren as Director-General of NCAA and by March 2007, that document was deposited.
“After 2007, two Nigerian airlines, First Nation and Topbrass, violated the CTC. Immediately they violated the CTC, Nigeria became blacklisted and once we were blacklisted, airlines could no longer get aircraft on dry lease and that was when the challenge came in.
It is a major effort and success that we can return Nigeria to what it was before. We are back to dry lease.”
