As controversial price war on Lagos/London route rages on

As the controversial price war amongst foreign airlines operating the Lagos/London route rages on, Nigerian travelers may be the beneficiaries after all.

This is the notion of some key players who spoke with the Nigerian Tribune, following the campaigns engaged in by foreign carriers to tackle the coming of the Nigerian carrier, Air Peace Airline to break their monopoly on the route.

Air Peace had commenced flights on the lucrative Lagos/Nigerian route on March 30, and since then, the hitherto dominance of the foreign airlines especially the two British carriers, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have been challenged following the affordable regime of fares rolled out by the Nigerian carrier, which has obviously thrown the foreign carriers off balance.

In their resilience to hinder Air Peace from successfully making an inroad into the London route, all the carriers, which had hitherto conspired to make travels between Nigeria and London cumbersome to Nigerians through exploitative fares, suddenly adopted the marketing strategy otherwise known as price war to drastically reduce their fares on the same route just to clip the wing of Air Peace in order for them to continue to monopolise the route.

Many of the key players who spoke to Nigerian Tribune, have argued that though the price war will end in the favour of the Nigerian travellers who will now enjoy different options to access cheaper fares, they equally accused the foreign airlines of greed in view of the high fares they slammed on Nigerians prior to now.

While reacting to the price war and the implications the stakeholders declared that if the situation continues it may escalate to the extent the federal government might need to summon the two British carriers.

The Chief Executive of the United States-based Santos Aviation, Mr Segun Adesanya believed that at the end of the sales war, the development may end up favouring Air Peace Airlines and the Nigerian travellers.

“What they are all doing now is the creation of something called “Free Enterprise. At the end, I think the consumer will benefit more, even if they don’t support Air Peace, they will still have their choice of airline to fly with at a competitive flight fare and the glory will still go back to Mr Allen Onyema,” said Adesanya.

“Let’s keep on watching, the whole world of the industry is also watching which means there’s something positive happening in Nigeria,” he added.

For the president of the National Association of Nigeria Travel Agents, Mrs Susan Akporiaye, the ongoing situation means more business for the travel agents and more chances for Nigerians to travel.

She, however, rejected the different fares being bandied as the present fares for the London route saying: “For us as travel agents, it means we are back in business, sales will go up as more Nigerians will now be travelling as it has become affordable.

“If you are talking about the prices flying around. I don’t know where social media is getting those figures from, definitely not from the Nigerian market because we have been looking for those fares both on the GDS platform and the airline website. It maybe from another market probably but not from the Nigerian market because we don’t see most of those prices being published on social media. I want to believe it’s the work of some mischievous people trying to push a particular narrative. If you don’t believe me please ask a travel agent for fares and also go on the airline website to confirm.

“The prices are definitely coming down no doubt about that, the more the rate of exchange goes down the more the ticket prices will also go down. Foreign airlines price their tickets in dollars; it’s the prevailing rate of exchange that depends on what the amount is in naira. If by miracle, rate of exchange drops to 100 naira to a dollar a 1,000 dollars ticket will be 100,000 naira, so you see it’s the rate of exchange rate that determines how much ticket price is in naira.”

In his reaction, a renowned labour leader in the sector, Comrade Olayinka Abioye, who described the actions of the foreign carriers against Air Peace as more of Aero politics and not price war, said the international airlines are only exploiting Nigerians because they know that Nigerians are obsessed with foreign things even, when it is not all foreign items that are better than Nigerian products.

He said:  “All that is required is an aggressive local campaign for fellow Nigerians to push for the ‘flyNIGERIANAIRLINES’ since more of our Nigerian Airlines will jump into the fray. One thing however is that our airlines must play by the rules, obey to the fullest all regulations and applicable rules, depart as at when due and arrive appropriately baring no other extraneous issues. We are good to go and Air Peace should be assured of the support of all and sundry.”

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