The high premium the Nigerian airlines pay on their aircraft which has been hitting deeply into the operational costs again formed a major discussion at the just concluded seventh Aviation Africa Summit and Exhibition in Abuja.
Speaking the minds of the domestic airline operators in Nigeria, chairman of Air Peace, Mr Allen Onyema, lamented how, despite the highest safety records implemented in the country’s aviation sector, the indigenous airlines are still subjected to paying the highest insurance premium globally.
According to the Vice President of Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON); “Insurance premium we pay on one aircraft is what the legacy airlines of this world pay on four aircraft”.
He used the opportunity to puncture the notion that Nigerian airlines are weak and incapacitated, saying; “We take exception to the comments that Nigerian airlines are weak. The CEO of Ethiopian Airlines should stop lampooning Nigerian airlines”.
According to him, no foreign airline, including Ethiopian Airlines, would survive for three days if subjected to the same kind of operating environment the Nigerian airlines are facing.
“Other African countries should also respect Nigeria. If they are coming to our country, we should be allowed to come to their countries. We must be fair. We are against being stopped by other countries. This country is unnecessarily being stigmatised and we refuse to be stigmatised.”
Onyema however commended the new government of President Bola Tinubu for making the implementation of the Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility as a cardinal programme to improve aviation development.
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