Chief obiora Okonkwo, Chairman/CEO United Nigeria Airline, UNA during a press briefing in Lagos.
The Chairman, United Nigeria Airline, UNA, Chief Obiora Okonkwo says, for every ticket sold in the country, the airlines subsidizes due to cost of operations.
According to him, for flight tickets to be sold for N20,000, N21,000 with the current exchange rate and fuel cost would mean airlines are doing a lot to ensure Nigerians desire to travel by air are meant.
At a press conference to mark its one anniversary in Lagos, the United Airline boss said, “as long as all the airlines are buying from the same market they are buying foreign exchange in the same condition any ticket at this rate is being subsidized by the airline”.
Explaining further, Chief Okonkwo stated that, aviation girl alone accounts for 30-40% of their operating cost coupled with the deductions to all the agencies, adding that, after all these deductions including maintaining the aircraft, paying staff salaries from the ticket fare of N20,000 or so, the airlines have no choice but to subsidize.
“Aviation fueldepending on how it is applied and the type of aircraft could easily become 30 to 40 percent of the cost component of your operation and as you know, for every ticket you sell you have 5% deduction to NCAA direct and you have other deductions to NAMA, FAAN and the airport owners and as a matter of fact, by the time you remove these deductions from the N20,000 we are talking about you have to use your money to finish some of them and then take care of other operational needs”.
Okonkwo said unfortunately, while the taxes, salaries, exchange rates, fuel price and airport charges kept increasing, the cost of aircraft has not reduced and the airlines have continued to ensure safety is maintained and aircraft are in the skies.
“You could recall also in 2000, you may have bought a ticket at N2,000, that N2,000 was $100 based on the exchange rate and it is important that we refer this exchange rate in this discussion because 99% of aviation component is foreign exchange denominated even the increase in fuel is because of foreign exchange because this fuel seems to be imported but from that 2000 up till now, the cost of aircraft has not reduced, salaries to staff are in the increase all the other cost, the airport are increasing their cost, the landing charges are increasing”.
He described the last one year of operations as productive one and during the period, it airlifted over 260,000 passengers with to their various destinations peacefully, comfortably and safely operating 40 daily flights.
“That represents 75 percent of our total capacity. We took off in February reaching Lagos, Abuja, Enugu and Asaba after demo flights in January 2021. In April we opened up the Owerri and Port Harcourt wings and in May, we responded to demand by creating additional flights to Lagos and Abuja. We hit Yenagoa in July becoming the only airline operating into Bayelsa International Airport. We further responded to high demand on the Owerri, Asaba and Enugu routes by creating additional flights to those airports in November and in December, we started flying into the newly built Anambra Cargo Airport at Umueri”.
He also disclosed that, on its expansion programme, it will be expanding domestic operations to reach, in the next few weeks, Benin, Kano, Jigawa and Yola, and to increase its fleet size, adding that It has created over 500 direct jobs and more than a thousand indirect jobs.
“These are part of our immediate expansion programme as we work to ensure that none of our aircraft remains on ground. They belong to the skies and that is where they must be”.
“Our vision is to satisfactorily serve the public and become noted for on-time departure. In fact, that should be our signature. We know that there are constrains, natural, technical and human that affect on-time departure. While we cannot take adequate control of the natural factors, we shall do our best to keep the technical and human reasons under check”, he added.
“With the expansion of our fleets comes the extension of our operations into the West Coast region and then, obviously, continental. This also comes with the strengthening of our staff strength and our capacity in the area of human power. These are the things we are going to do because we need strong human resource to be able to deliver decent services within this expansion projections”.
