Air Peace Limited said it has acquired two new Boeing 737-500
aircraft as part of efforts to boost its fleet in readiness for its
foray into the African market.
The Chairman/CEO of the company,
Chief Allen Onyeama, who spoke in an interview with journalists said the
airline had just been licenced to fly outside Nigeria and that it had
become necessary to make investments in the purchase of new aircraft for
the new routes.
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“We have been designed to fly into these regional
routes: Dakar, Senegal; Accra, Ghana, Niamey, Niger; Abidjan, Ivory
Coast; and Douala, Cameroon.
“One of the new aircraft has the
capacity to take 142 passengers, while the other can take 126
passengers. In our fleet, we have nine Boeing and one Dornier aircraft,
which makes us the second largest airline in Nigeria in terms of the
number of aircraft. Some of the aircraft we will deploy for the regional
routes.
“We have visited the civil aviation and relevant authorities in these
countries and plans are at advanced state. we will soon announce our
commencement dates on these routes but one thing that we want to assure
our passengers is that we will put in our cockpit the best of pilots,”
Onyema added.
He also said the airline had been designated to fly
into China, Dubai, India, and South Africa. He said his company was
ready to make the requisite investments to grow in the industry and
create more jobs for Nigerians.
He said at present, and in just two years, the airline had employed over 700 Nigerians.
He,
however, lamented the harsh operating environment in Nigeria saying
airlines were finding it so difficult to survive as going businesses.
Onyeama
said most investors in the domestic airline business were stunned when
recently the National Assembly had to wade in to resolve the recent
challenges of scarcity of fuel and forex forcing some foreign airlines
to cease doing business in Nigeria, while failing over the years to
respond to the numerous challenges stifling local airlines.
“The
domestic airline industry is not getting the right support it deserves
from the government as they would rather do everything possible to
support foreign airlines,” lamented Onyema.
“We do more for the
country than the foreign airlines. If the foreign airlines face the kind
of challenges that we face for 72 hours, they will all pack out of
Nigeria. The government must rise up and protect local airlines,” he
added.
The Air Peace boss listed the challenges facing local
airlines to include forex and fuel scarcity, high premium on insurance,
double taxation to regulatory and airport agencies, as well as the
failure of Nigerian Customs Services (NCS) to comply to recent
government directives that exempted important aircraft spares from VAT.
Onyeama
said his airline lost over 260 Million recently when Customs refused to
release imported engine spares to the airline, thus forcing the
grounding of that particular aircraft for weeks.
He also criticized some local airlines charging airfares as low as N12,500 on some routes.
He
said such fares were unrealistic and that airlines who charged such
fares in an attempt to woo passengers and stay in the game, did so not
minding that such undue or unfair competitive scheme could force them
into breaching the safety of the aircraft, the crew and the lives of
passengers.
He also lamented the inability of local airlines to source for credits both locally and internationally.
