‘Poor management, not traffic drop collapsed local airlines from 150 to 9 in 17 years’
Aviation expert, Chief John Ugbene has revealed that contrary to speculations in some quarters that it was momentary drop in traffic and government policies that failed over 140 local airlines over the years, poor management by way of putting round pegs in round holes vanished all the carriers.
He said “Just like what happened to Arik Air and Aero in recent times, without the smart intervention of the federal government, both of them would have gone the same way before the end of this year”.
“I want to caution AMCON to be very careful in not being in haste to handover the two controlled airlines even if they start to do well in the near future because what was killing them will take years to be healed even if it has been diagnosed.
Only recently, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) disclosed that the nation’s aviation industry witnessed a reduction of airlines from 150 in the year 2000 to about nine functional ones in 2017.
General Manager, public affairs NCAA, Sam Adurogboye, who made the observation at the Lagos airport, described the drastic reduction as one of the achievements of effective regulation by his agency.
While absolving NCAA of any responsibility for the failures, he said it was an erroneous claim that the NCAA was pushing airlines out of business through multiple charges and levies.
He said “When the NCAA started on January 1, 2000, it had about 150 airlines on its register,” revealing that “By 2006, they had reduced to 28 from 150, so what happened to the rest? They all went under because the NCAA had started regulating their operations.”
