Huhuonline.com understands that the crisis rocking the Nigerian aviation industry reached a new dimension on Tuesday, with a threat by the Airline Operators of Nigerian threatening to ground all their airplanes by Friday if nothing was done to curb rising costs.
The threat was handed down by Alhaji Yunusa, the President of the airline operators in Nigeria, and also chairman of Azman Air.
That was one of the key points reached at a meeting convened by the Senate Committee on Aviation, headed by Smart Adeyemi, to tackle the crisis rocking the domestic industry, lead chiefly by the high cost of Aviation Fuel or Jet A1.
The aviation operators lamented that at the price of N670 per litre of Jet A1 oil they cannot break even, arguing that they had in fact been subsidizing the cost of flying in Nigerian, with a one-one flight ticket for economy costing N50,000. Without such a subsidy, they said the cost could be as high as N120,000 to N150,000.
But they said the subsidy could not be sustained unless the government would bail out the industry through financial assistance.
“Based on the cost component of airline operation in Nigeria today, the actual cost for the ticket of one-hour flight is N150,000 but passengers are being charged a paltry N50,000.00 which is not sustainable.
“We are overburdened by this ticket subsidy and heavily indebted to banks with consequences of running out of business if required actions were not taken,” the chairman said.
Adeyemi asked the airline operators for some days of respite to the National Assembly to enable the legislature to raise the issue with the executive arm of government.
He promised that the issue would be raised on the floor of the Senate during plenary today, Wednesday, to see to the possibility of getting the federal government to offer a bailout to the aviation industry.
The Tuesday meeting followed a similar one on Monday convened by the leadership of the House of Representatives, with airlines’ officials, the management of the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited, and oil marketers in attendance.
Meanwhile, a three-day window offered by the airlines expires on Thursday. At the Monday meeting, all parties involved agreed to a price N500 per litre of the aviation fuel, to last for three days. Within that period, all the stakeholders are expected to reach an agreement on another price that is acceptable to all, including the airlines.
What is happening to the aviation sector is similar to what’s going in manufacturing. Industrial and commercial activities are being hurt by the escalating price of diesel. At over N700 per litre of diesel, many organisations are finding it difficult to operate.
There is no respite for them from the national grid, which has collapsed two times within three days. The latest collapse occurred late Tuesday, less than six hours after power was restored following the collapse on Sunday/Monday.
