…….Resumes operations in May this year
……Consolidates on domestic operations
Medview airline is to acquire a bigger aircraft to operate all its routes both local, hajj, regional and international routes as it is working closing with Boeing and a leasing company to achieve this.
Managing Director/CEO, Medview, Alhaji Muneer Bankole in an interactive with the media in Lagos, said the airline had decided to scale down its operations on the London and Dubai routes as two of its aircraft were currently being re-figured and undergoing C-checks in a facility outside the country.
“Apart from this airplane, we leased two aero planes 777 and 737-800 which we have returned, the reason why we returned is the earlier aircraft I said had an issue, you cannot lease or owe an aircraft with these challenges, the decision to return them affected our London and Dubai routes, now we are working closely with Boeing and a leasing company, we are trying to procure a bigger aircraft that will support our hajj, London and Dubai routes. The B737-500 is going through a C-check, it will be delivered before the end of the first week of May”.
He noted that while its domestic and regional operations were still up and running, the absence of the two aircraft had affected their schedule operations and so it had to re-strategies and consolidate on its domestic operations and restructure and re-plan its strategies to satisfy its customers.
“What we have achieved now, they say charity begins at home, rather flying everywhere and making nonsense of the whole operations, we consolidated on the domestic operations with no challenge, we are flying 99.9% capacity, we have developed a new model”.
Bankole emphasized that ,”We are here to testify that the domestic, hajj operations, regional and International operations are sustainable routes for us”.
Explaining steps taken on the decision to suspend the London and Dubai routes, the MD/CEO of Medview said the agencies of government of the two countries were duly notified including the Nigeria CAA.
“What we did on London, Dubai routes was to go the CAA and the agencies of government of those countries, we said on the 15th of March, we wrote officially and we mention to CAA Nigeria that we will suspend the flights to those areas and the reason why we want to do so and we re-protect our dear passengers, which probably would have been a commendable effort by my colleagues. Some of our passengers flew on Emirates, Virgin Atlantic and other few airlines”.
“What are saying here is that we have Abeke that will take off the Dubai shot but there were delays like I have said, they completely carried out beyond what we expected that’s the MRO apart refurbishing all the toilets, they emptied the whole aircraft and when such is the case, you need to go through a new test as if you are working from a manufacturer point of view that is why we have the delay between and today, we have bought seats, premium economy which are being fixed, once we get the delivery of the aircraft we are done with that”.
Primarily we started with hajj, that is why hajj is very important for us. On from our recorded, we have been involved with the Hajj Commission for the past twelve years now, we have done with over 80,000 pilgrims in and out, it gives us between 30-35% of revenue to Medview every year. We thank the National Hajj Commission, NAHCON for believing in us, the Chairman/ CEO of NAHCON and his colleagues for the trust and commitment we have shared together over the past10 to 15 years.
Going down memory lane, Bankole explains how its operations have been running since 2012,”On our domestic operations from 2012 till today, we have lifted over 8.2 million passengers, averagely its growing, last year its grows over 680,000, previous year 597,000, we thank God, we have not had any incident or accident and we have nothing to do than to praise God”.
“We opened the regional routes which we call the Anglophone, Accra, Freetown, Monrovia as you know, we are still there, don’t let anyone deceive you. We thought again we should hit London at late 2015, averagely we carried from London on monthly basis nothing less than 8,000 to 10,000 passengers out of the huge number, in January 2018 to be precise we had about 9,000 passengers. London has been a very profitable route, Nigerians on this route are keen and happy for the success story we have been able to achieve, a lot of families in the past cannot afford to come home with children but with Medview support they have been able to come home to see their children and other family members, that we have the credit”he added.
