Four months after six major airlines signed an alliance to support one another’s operations and improve service delivery to passengers, the lingering aviation fuel crisis has eroded gains of the alliance as flight delays and cancellations continue to worsen in Nigeria.
The airlines that sign this alliance in March 2022 include Air Peace, Azman Air, United Nigeria, Arik Air, Aero Contractors and Max Air.
Airline alliances are partnerships between or among airlines. Within these collaborations, airlines can share resources, pick up passengers or extend partner routes and even offer the ability to earn and redeem miles through each other’s rewards programmes.
Allen Onyema, chairman of Air Peace and vice-president of the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), had said when the alliance was signed that it would benefit passengers who fly with the six airlines.
Onyema explained that with the alliance, passengers of any of the airlines would be protected if one of the airlines had an issue, thereby reducing flight delays drastically across Nigeria.
However, BusinessDay learnt that the aviation fuel scarcity crisis has made airlines’ expectations from the alliance unachievable.
Nuru Aliyu, assistant general manager at Azman Air, regretted that the gains of the alliance had been eroded by flight delays and cancellations as a result of the skyrocketing price of aviation fuel.
“The price of aviation fuel is now above N700 per litre and even when we have the money to buy fuel, these marketers don’t have fuel. They don’t have it in stock and sometimes they have to transport the fuel all the way from Lagos to Abuja. So, that is why there are still flight delays despite the alliance signed by the airline,” Aliyu explained.
He, however, hinted that the alliance is working and airlines are benefitting from it.
“When we have few passengers on a scheduled flight, an airline that flies to the same destination can help us airlift passengers. Few days ago, Azman had to transfer some of its passengers to Air Peace to help it airlift to Kano because the passengers on its flight were few and carrying few passengers will amount to losses for the airline,” he said.
Olabanji Ola, Arik’s public relations and communications manager, told BusinessDay that there was no readily available supply of aviation fuel for airlines.
Ola, who also confirmed that airlines have continued to experience flight delays as a result of steady increase in aviation fuel price, said airlines are still cooperating with one another.
Passengers have raised concerns about the continued delay of flights after signing the alliance.
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“There is no time my flight takes off as scheduled. When airlines signed the alliance a few months ago, I was happy and hopeful that there would be some level of respite for passengers but this has not happened. Flight delays have worsened and sometimes there are outright cancellations,” Faith Azu, a traveller, told BusinessDay.
According to Azu, in other countries, airlines with such alliances are protected by their sister airlines when they are not able to operate.
“All airlines cannot run out of fuel at the same time. So, this is the time the alliance should even work. Out of the six airlines, at least three or four of them should have fuel at some point to help their sister airlines. That is what an alliance is about. If they think they can’t sustain the alliance, then they should dissolve it,” she added.
The AON had recently disclosed that aviation fuel scarcity was impacting negatively on the conduct of air transport operations and would lead to flight rescheduling and cancellations.
BusinessDay had reported that Nigerian airlines’ air alliance may be coming a bit late, as several countries had since leveraged alliances to expand their networks.
In North America, Europe and India, Delta Airlines codeshares with Jet Airways and KLM. American Airlines and JetBlue have codeshare partnerships.
Emirates codeshares with Bangkok Airways available on Thai routes and other South East Asian destinations. The airline also codeshares with Flybe available on UK destinations.
Etihad Airways codeshares with Aer Lingus, Air Canada, Air Baltic to ply Dublin, London-Heathrow, Manchester and Amsterdam routes.
