Foreign airlines’ hard stance on Kaduna airport and its lessons for FG

After months of intrigues and counter intrigues, the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja has finally been closed down to give room for a thorough rehabilitation of its over flogged runway.

The Abuja airport runway before its ongoing upgrade had become a death trap to aircraft and passengers using the airport due to many years of neglect by the past governments but thanks to the President Muhammadu Buhari’s government which has finally taking up the responsibility to upgrade the airport to meet international standard.

The upgrade which commenced yesterday is expected to last for six weeks within which period all the Abuja bound flights are expected to divert to Kaduna airport.

The announcement to shut down the airport for six weeks coupled with the decision to divert all flights to Kaduna generated debates with one group faulting the total closure of a strategic international airport like Abuja for six weeks.

While that is going on one side, the choice of Kaduna as an alternative airport equally created frenzy among different people including foreign carriers for different reasons ranging from politics, tribalism to genuine fear amongst others.

Not quite long after the announcement of the choice of Kaduna was made that majority of the foreign carriers vehemently expressed their disagreement over the alternative choice basically attributed to safety reasons.

Despite all the pleas and assurances from the minister of state for aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika and lately the acting president, Professor Yemi Osibajo that they will be well protected, the foreign carriers unanimously stood their ground by insisting there was no going back on their decision.

In all honesty, the foreign airlines have the right to determine where they want to operate to especially when it involves issues of safety of their machines, passengers and other logistics in view of the unpalatable stories of insecurity that had been coming out of Kaduna State which no good businessman or entity will want to expose such a business to.

Many key players who have seen the positions of the foreign airlines as a sabotage, conspiracy and sheer arrogance, have called for a review of the unlimited opportunities the same government they failed to cooperate with gave them.

Well, the point is, let no one blame the foreign airlines because they know what the business of airline entails and their home countries will not forgive them if they take any action that may lead to safety compromise.

But in all these, it is the Nigerian government that deserves the total blame for sacrificing its own local airlines so cheaply and ignorantly; for by now, it should have dawned on the government that it only has control over the Nigerian carriers and not over the foreign carriers who will only take directives from their home countries which is normal.

The whole scenario has gone to expose the failure of the subsequent governments in Nigeria who had and is still neglecting its own airlines and supporting the foreign ones forgetting that when the chicken comes home to roost that the foreign airlines will be answerable to their own governments.

Obviously, with the latest experience, the time has come for the government to put on its thinking cap and start looking at how to use all in its power to build the serious domestic airlines to be able to bridge any gap future decisions the foreign carriers may take that can affect the country’s air transport.

According to an adage which says ‘there is nothing wrong in supporting your own’, this development has confirmed the fear earlier raised by key players on the continuous pampering of the foreign carriers over the domestic airlines.

While the foreign carriers will continue to take order from their home governments whose policies have helped make business easy for them, can the domestic airlines in Nigeria really say positive things about their government which has only succeeded in making the business environment so uncomfortable through hostile policies?

Such unfriendly policies which have been the bane of the domestic airlines include: unfriendly Bilateral Air Services Agreements (BASA), unlimited frequencies to multiple entry points.

The irony of it all is that these domestic airlines that are not enjoying the maximum support of the government are the only one standing by it while the over pampered foreign airlines have chosen to be fair weather friends.