The Country Would Have Been Affected by Airworthiness Directive Except for Cape Town Convention–Demuren

27 May 2011

interview

The Airworthiness Directive as proposed by the United States has generated issues among Nigerian carriers, what is it all about, explain its true nature?

It is all about the Air Worthiness Directives(AD) which borders on certain inspection and it is mandatory inspection that is carried out on some of the aircraft that are flying all over the world. You remember the event of early April when one of the aircraft flying in the U.S has sudden decompressed and the part of the fuselage was out that was what basically led to this AD and we were reading a lot of articles in the papers, not only Air Nigeria, all over the world. Nigeria operates a lot of Boeing 737 aircraft; in fact it is the Hercules on the domestic scene. So it is important that we put the minds of the travelling public at rest as to what is happening; are we following the AD or we are not doing it. We need to put their minds at rest, you know, before I read this presentation, let me say this; you remember five to six years ago, when we came in, you (media), were very worried over the fact that we were flying aged aircraft.

Some of you even said that we were flying coffins and your pressure was heavy and we were able to remove all those old aircraft. We are doing everything to get Cape Town Convention implemented in Nigeria. That is why it is good for Nigeria today. If you had not done that, we would have been heavily affected. We have changed the fleets in this country; I mean at that time we were talking about aircraft of about 33, 35 and 37 years old aircraft and we would have been in a big mess. it is because we have done that, that we have relatively brand new ones operating in the country and it makes life very easy and that is exactly where we are. On April 5, 2011, the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an emergency AD, which indicated that a model of Boeing 737-300 series has a defect.

Is there any way NCAA can approach the various state governments to enlighten them on training their citizens at the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT)?

Over the years, state government has been sponsoring people in Zaria. NCAA as an organisation, we sponsor every year and we will continue to do this because we must live by example and we are always asking all these state governments who are personally building new airports all over the place that they should also sponsor their citizens and we are encouraging them to sponsor their citizens in Zaria. We believe that they should do this in these areas such as training of engineers, ATC and pilots. I think it is important that all of us must do this but the difficulty that we have is this; you mentioned a figure just now like N7million, usually they look at it as a lot of money that can train five doctors. Aviation is a sector where we are always competing with education, with health, with social welfare, we are very expensive and if you know how much money is spent by the liquidated Nigeria Airways Limited (NAL) to train these guys, it cost a lot of money, you cannot chrome pilots overnight and you cannot chrome ATC over night or engineers overnight. If it were possible, we would have done it.

It takes a lot of time and money and they must pass after that training. We don’t even know the failure rate; it is not everybody that starts the class that makes it through. I want to appeal to people, the state government and federal government. Zaria has been trying on their side, a lot of organisations are also trying to support and that is why I said that if we can get up to 10 per cent of the BASA funds every year, not just once in one year. Let me confess to you, this was what Nigeria government was doing before when there was Nigeria Airways. Nigeria government put a lot of money into training, most of the people that we have as experts were trained by the government. In fact right on this table with me, we have three people who were beneficiaries of such training and we did not plan this. Look, all of you there are journalists but the people from here are not journalists; the three of them are from Ex-Nigeria Airways, the Federal government trained all of them. After the demise of Nigeria Airways, we stopped training, so that is why I suggested, let’s take that money, put it in Zaria and continually train people just keep doing it. We are now in strict competition with the outside world. You know before, we were very happy in this part of the world, when we need pilots and we don’t have enough in Nigeria, we go to South East Asia, India and bring them back because we are paying more salaries than those places but prosperity has smiled on them also now everybody is developing his own aviation industry.

Nigerian airlines are not making profit because they are continuously lamenting that the cost of operation is too high, they say that aviation fuel is now cash and carry and all these hves led to flight delays, which passengers have been complaining about? How can NCAA intervene on this issue?

Aviation business is not a goal mine, a lot of people think it is a gold mine, it is not a gold mine, and the rate of return in investment in aviation is about two, three per cent at best for its manufacturers or the airlines. It is with volume, we do large volume and when you get to aviation, you see cash flowing; big cash flow everyday but they are not our money, the money belongs to fuel marketers, major organisations, training facilities and they have to pay lease, rental because you have big volume. We have this saying all the time, aviation is the only business in life that can make a pauper a million tomorrow and also the only business that can make a billionaire become a pauper the second day.

Aviation is a waste product, for instance, I am in aviation and you are selling cement, if you do business today and you don’t sell your cement, you can sell it tomorrow, you can even sell it next year but in my case, once I operate a flight and I don’t put passengers on board, I have lost that product because I still pay for the crew, I pay for the fuel, I pay for ground handling, I pay for everything so I can’t sell it, they call it perishable product. People don’t understand that, so how do we help our airlines? The way we can help our airline is that we should lower the operating cost and that is very important at the end of the day, it is volume that matters. We must lower our operation cost, we must also give a lot of incentives to ensure that they can operate positively. One of the things that we are doing right now is to look at the airlines, look at their routes structure; there are certain routes that are very good. When Asaba airport is completed and they decide to complete that place, come and check in one year what I have said now; flight out of Lagos to Asaba, Asaba to Abuja that axis will be something else.

For the first time, we will be competing with the road, all our businessmen in Onitsha carrying big cash, they won’t go by road, they will come with us by air, once they land in Asaba, 10 minutes they are in their homes, 30 minutes they are here, why should they risk their lives at night through all night bus and armed robbers can Way lay everybody. So we can start competing and that is why we can now fill up the aircraft. We will improve on that route; you know it is a state airport and Deltans are also very rich people. There are a lot of them that will travel and do business but the people that will enjoy most are Onitsha people; the commercial centre for Nigeria and it is an axis between Lagos and that place.

Those are the things that we are trying to do. Right now what is our biggest area; it is only in that old axis; Lagos-Abuja-Port Harcourt. I am saying don’t blame the airlines; you say why are they always flying to these places, where will they fly to, that is where the passengers are. We recorded during this last Easter period despite the elections, we recorded very high figures. We saw some airlines doing almost 60 something flights that day, those who were normally doing 40 got up to 60 something, while the biggest airlines doing 120 got up to 140,150 flights that day. That is good for us. In fact, these are the things that we need to do because those are the good areas to us as you know Christmas is coming again.

What is NCAA doing about the high cost of aviation fuel which sold by oil marketers on cash and carry basis.

On fuel; that is now cash and carry, the fact is that it is not all the fuel marketers that do business on cash and carry. There are some cases and in fact, we have summoned the fuel marketers here, we are still on it, the price of aviation fuel is ridiculous in Nigeria, it is too high and we need to knock this down. We are working on this and I believe that we will be able to do this and so we cannot continue this way. We are now in April going to May, back in October, November if my records are clear, aviation fuel was sold about N80 something naira now it is N160 per litre of aviation fuel. We cannot operate that way and then we have not doubled our price; we did not double the price of the ticket. We need to reduce this but we thank God that the Federal government is doing a lot to refine fuel in Nigeria. It is kerosene; it is just a high quality of kerosene. We have been doing this before in Nigeria and they are a lot loop holes that we are trying to close right now. We are talking to the government, we have held two meetings with the fuel marketers, and the third one will be a major one because everybody will be present. I will brief you after that, so that is what we are doing.

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