Investors decry inability to secure land at airports for MRO facilities

 Investors decry inability to secure land at airports  for MRO facilities 

Investors in the Nigeria’s aviation industry have  decried the inability to secure  land  at Nigerian airports to build a Maintenance Repair and Overhaul ( MRO) facilities in the country. 

Efforts to secure space for aircraft repair facilities , they said is stalled  by  bureaucracy and   attendant prohibitive cost  associated with such acquisition.

Founder of a charter airline - Musa Adede and Chairman of Air Peace , Allen Onyema disclosed this yesterday in Lagos.

They made the disclosure at the  Aviation Safety Round Table Initiative  Q2 2023 Brunch Business Meeting.

Aligning their thoughts with the theme of the meeting ;" Aviation Reset : Agenda for a New Administration ",  Adede and Onyema admitted that  majority of  the challenges airlines gace in Nigeria stem from the fact that a lot of services are done overseas and paid for in hard currency.

This development , they said,  is  encouraging  capital flight resulting in  huge financial burden  to  airlines.

 Adede while reeling out his suggestions for Aviation in the National Conference 2014 canvassed reduction of charges for holistic industry development by  the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN).

He compared what obtains elsewhere stating that land is leased for 20 years when thereafter investors can start paying.

He said :" Reduction in land charge by FAAN, how can you even develop your local capacity when every single operator takes his plane outside of the country to maintain? The cost of ferrying this planes to and from abroad is so huge, why? Because we don’t have MROs, FAAN would not give you land to develop hangars.

“They charge you 100+ millions. It’s even cheaper to buy land in Ikoyi than to get land in Ikeja and so you find out the industry is not moving forward.

“In other parts of the world, they are given land on lease to develop the industry over a period of 20 years and then you can now pay back.”

On his part,  Onyema lamented that eight of his aircraft are currently abroad gulping foreign exchange on maintenance because there is no MRO.

He said that he had equally applied for a land from FAAN to commence building an MRO since 2016 but sadly, that has not come to pass despite the high cost in hundreds of millions attached to the land.

He said :"  If you ask I would say an MRO would have been what Government should have thought about to save capital flight but even at that they should create an enabling environment for serious minded business men to go into it because the government has no business there, they will just fail.

“There are serious minded investors who have the capital to embark on this investment all they need is the right atmosphere."

Speaking on the NCAA’s recent released figures on delays and cancellations, Onyema said airlines being blamed for poor performances are unfair because the CAA only provided data without breakdowns.

“Recently, the NCAA came out with the assessment of the situation, without telling the world what caused those cancellation and delays. Placing their own airlines in a position that is very unfair because you’d expect when they say airline cancelled 30 flights, you should also give them the headings  of cancellation came from weather, the other came as a result of VIP movement, nobody said that, they just posted Nigerian airlines are posting delays.

“I have this to say, let us go and bring the best of the airlines in the world, bring them into Nigeria: don’t give them any special support, allow them to operate in these same conditions Nigerian airlines operate, they will not last 72 hours. 

“When we talk about delays, is it the job of the airline to chase away wildlife? Air Peace alone this year has had about 18 bird strikes, you know what that means to the operations of an airline. One airline alone 18, the year is not finished and we are talking about airlines posting delays. 

"When one happens, each aircraft is supposed to do seven  or eight  flights in a day, once that happens assuming you are doing your first or second flight, it is very difficult to recover to do the other flights on time. 

“When we criticize airlines for delays and cancellations we must tell ourselves the truth and look at what causes these delays. We just talked about bird strike in fact there was a day when we had two bird strikes in one day in one station in Benin. Our airbus landed with a bird strike our Embraer  went to rescue passengers and got hit by another bird strike."