AM EDITORIAL: A Case For Holistic Approach Towards Fixing Nigeria’s Aviation System

Like the aviation sector of many other countries, Nigeria’s aviation industry has its own challenges, some of which have been persistent due to external economic factors beyond the sector’s control, personal interest of individuals in leadership, lack of good corporate governance, inefficiency of individual business models, lack of or neglect of accurate data, absence of a political will to fix problems, and other factors.

Until industry leadership begins to perceive and holistically administer the sector as a chain of systems, persisting challenges will still persist.

Coming from the three legged perspectives of man (manpower and service users), machines (aircraft and airports infrastructure) and environment (policy conditions and external influences), airlines cannot do well without apt regulation and fully equipped airports. Airports cannot thrive without airlines and airport users. Both cannot live up to standards without the needed professionals or manpower.

Air travelers will not patronize both airports and airlines if they are not encouraged by service quality to do so and they will disrupt the entire chain with unruly behaviour when there is poor customer service. Aviation customer service is bound to be poor where there is inefficiency of one part of the entire ecosystem and a lack of coordination and cooperation among stakeholders.

Aviation operating environment and policies have to support airlines and airport profitability. Truth be told! Airports infrastructure and airline licensing without an enabling policy and cost environment cannot fix Nigeria’s aviation ecosystem. Where passenger volumes are thinning out and service demand is softening, the sector retracts and gets threatened.

High fares discourage airlines’ patronage by air travellers. Air travelers form the traffic needed by airlines to make profit and needed by airports to generate non-aeronautical revenues. Air travel is determined by the purchasing power of travelers, which the aviation industry has no control over.

For airlines that have enough aircraft however, low patronage keeps aircraft on the ground instead of in the air, with the loss implications that follow such phenomenon. The absence of required airports infrastructure contributes significantly to flight delays, cancellations and unruly passenger behaviour that comes at a cost. Once one flight is delayed or cancelled, it disrupts the entire operations of an airline for that day and beyond. In most cases, there is a repeated carry over effect on the airline’s bottomline, and effect can eventually affect the entire chain or system.

Amidst all these are external factors of high fuel prices, multiple taxation and absence of local maintenance facilities. There is no way air fares can reduce under such situations. A system that is dysfunctional powers higher and higher costs, including cost of tickets and therefore, the challenge can hardly be addressed in isolation.

This year, there is a need for a quarterly evaluation of the entire ecosystem, to determine progress or otherwise of the sector. The media has to be involved by industry leadership in such periodic assessments. Issuing of press statements alone by leaderships, without seeking, receiving and evidently acting on feedbacks or making strategic adjustments, keeps the sector in developmental circumlocution.

There is a need to fix Nigeria’s aviation chain. Aviation development is beyond airline operations and safety. It is a comprehensive affair. Every stakeholder needs to pull in the same direction. No airline, handler, caterer or any other investor can thrive in a disrupted ecosystem. There has to be a unified definition of On-Time Performance, schedule integrity and other elements.

For instance, if airline business, which is capital intensive in nature with thin profit margins is expected to survive in Nigeria, a country that is an emerging market with an immature financial system, then, a high level of experience laced with professional skill and knowledge of economics, in addition to lobbying of external influencers like Dangote Petroleum, Central Bank of Nigeria, Ministry of Finance, Internal Affairs and others, is required to record success.  It is also time to consider the establishment of a special vehicle to access cheaper funds such as the much talked about aviation development bank.

Managers of Nigeria’s aviation sector have to view the sector from the perspective of a chain of systems so as to apply appropriate fixing tools. The current government of Nigeria is doing a lot to sustain the system, considering the support Nigeria’s airlines have enjoyed so far. However, there is a need to do more.

For instance, we need to start from declaration of a masterplan. Then, we can identify and analyze existing anti-development issues based on accurate data. There is also need to design from start, a proactive response to possible internal and external disruptions, even when good masterplan implementation process begins. Only then can the sector’s chain of systems be fixed and positioned to evidently function effectively. Where systemic factors combine to create an environment not conducive for airlines and airports profitability, they can build up into investor skepticism, leaving a cultural struggle for survival of private investments.AM