Airline Bankruptcy: An Aviation Industry in quest of oxygen

Our aviation industry is in a comatose state.  This industry groans under huge landing fees, high cost of aviation fuel and sometimes non-availability, high flying charges, ground handling fees, while they have to contend with the forces of globalization, rapid innovation, highly safety challenges, too high regulation, too capital-intensive and government interference.

Also, poor airport infrastructure such as lighting, navigation equipment, has been adduced for costly airline operations in Nigeria. This industry is rated as over-taxed with outrageous taxes paid for landing, parking, and tickets sales; and also the industry is faced with ageing workforce and without any scheme put in place to replace growing talent deficit.

While the solutions have been over-flogged, we await government and players effort to tackle the frustrating challenges. We hope to see collaboration of the scale of those of Europe and US open skies in Africa and utilize of the PPP model to bring vibrancy to this sector.

But we should note that we are in the market. Players in this industry need a compelling ‘value exchange’ that will enable them differentiate, grow their customers’ engagement and ensure that they keep their brand top of mind. The results will be inevitably long-term profitable relationship. Players have to find ways to stand out from their competitors.

Finally, our sense of ownership drives us to speak out as we feel that we are losing something we hold so dear. Without any respite in place, we might wake up to a disaster in the future. It is painful to know that with the aviation industry, everything will be in a flux until we do something now. Structural challenges such as infrastructure bottlenecks hampered recovery in private investment and so government and players should come up with a Growth Path framework which should including investment in infrastructure, skills enhancement, and possible alliance/ties.