After years of appeal to Nigeria’s domestic carriers to cooperate as a means of survival strategy, it was good news when Indications just emerged of how Ibom Air owned by the Akwa Ibom State government has become the first to embrace interline/codeshare deal with a fellow airline.
Dropping the hint at a breakfast meeting organised by the Aviation Round Table, a non-governmental body of various aviation professionals on Thursday, the Chief Operating Officer of Ibom Air, Mr George Uriesi, though declined to unveil the chosen airline but declared that the Akwa Ibom owned carrier had concluded plans to unveil the new partnership with the un-named airline next month.
The call for domestic airlines to interline had been ongoing for about 20 years without any appreciable progress even while airlines in other climes had a long time embraced it to their advantages.
Only Air France interlined with the defunct Bellview and Aero, while domestic airlines ignored the call as if it was a.rocket science.
An interline flight is an agreement between airlines to coordinate passengers with an itinerary that uses multiple airlines, without having to check in again or deal with their baggage at the stopover while a codeshare agreement is where airlines operate flights on behalf of another airline, using their flight code.
Commenting on the development, the COO of Ibom Air, at the breakfast event tagged, “Utilising Interlining and Codeshare Agreements as Tools for Domestic Airlines Profitability and Passenger Comfort”, disclosed the extent to which his airline had gone to bring innovation to fruition.
While stating that Ibom Air had just finished a long process of interlining with some Nigerian airlines, the COO declared: “We are going to launch soon by May 2021.”
Describing the country’s airline sector as competitive because of the proliferation of airlines for a small pool of market which comes with lots of empty seats when aircraft doors are closed, Uriesi remarked, “We are on the last phase of the interline project. By May, we shall launch. The challenge of it is to have partners who are organized and who meet up with the organization of your company. Your workforce has to work together, seat together to look at your schedule, integrate into your reservation system.”
Reacting, the Director-General of NCAA, Captain Musa Nuhu lauded Uriesi for the idea which he said would help airlines to maximize profit and make air travel to be enjoyable for passengers and on the other hand eliminate delay and flight cancellations.
The DG NCAA said, “We are happy about this. Airlines are supposed to manage their business properly. These agreements are business decisions by airlines, have several benefits both for the airlines and passengers. I don’t see why a country of 200 million people cannot have 30 million passengers. It is not encouraging.
“The airlines need the political will to work together. Nigeria has the market. We must our resources and energy into this to bring it to fruition and not allow airlines like Ethiopian Airlines and Kenya to take advantage of our huge market.”
President of ART, Dr Gbenga in his opening remark, lamented that airlines’ poor schedule integrity year on year has eroded the good performance of the carriers following passengers’ complain of poor services offered by many of the airlines.
His words, “Poor on-time performance, the depleting and inadequate fleet have led to many of the challenges of airlines. If we had an interline arrangement, It would have helped to reduce the hardship faced by passengers who in most times are faced with long hours of delay and in some cases, cancellation of flights.”
Former director-General of NCAA, Dr Harold Demuren expressed joy at the one-ticket initiative by Ibom Air and others.
Demuren flayed the slow process of interline/codeshare in Nigeria, stressing that this should have been done a long time ago in the interest of the sector.
He pointed to the use and advancement of technology by commercial banks with the way a Bank ATM machine can be used for financial transactions in other Banks’ ATM cards.
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