Any airline operator indebted to aviation agencies who before now get waivers because of their relationship with the presidency should henceforth be prepared to pay what they owe as the Minister of state, aviation, Alhaji Hadi Sirika says it will no longer be business as usual.
The Minister in a chat with aviation reporters in Laos, said the villa would no longer be opened to such Operators who show non-challant attitude in doing the right thing.
According to the Minister, the Federal Government would no longer tolerate a such where airlines embark on flight operations, collect money from passengers, pile up debts and refuse to pay for services rendered.
“Under this administration, it is not going to happen to allow them to continue to pile debt and go to the villa and the debts are either waived off or the debts are post- dated. No villa will call any airline. There is no door that is open for”.
Sirika noted that one of the domestic airlines was owing one of the agencies to the tune of N13 billion, while another which was on the verge of being taken over was owing to the tune of N500 billion, wondering how an agency would continue in operation if such huge debts was owed it.
“Look there is an airline that is owing one of the agencies N13bn. There is an airline that is owing total debt of N500bn which is its collective indebtedness of that airline. That airline crashed or at least it is being taken over. And I do feel that in a situation like that”.
The minister stressed that the only person they can speak with was either himself or the Director General, NCAA on the matter and they must come with clean hands,”no doors and windows that is open in the villa for any entrepreneur to break the law and get it resolved not at this time and also he cannot come unclean to the office of the minister or the DG NCAA with unclean hands and expect to get something out of it, if you come to Justice, you come with clean hands”.
He appealed to the Operators to get their priorities right, be focused and reorganize, operate the right business model to break even.
“I think is getting their priority right and doing the business model that would bring money for them. Everybody wants to run into scheduled passenger flights. There is a lot they can do in aviation”.
