Airpeace, one of Nigeria’s domestic carriers has called on the federal government of Nigeria to intervene in the reciprocation of bilateral agreement Nigeria is privy to.
Bilateral Air Service Agreement is a commercial pact to aid flight operations between two countries.
Speaking during a press briefing, Allen Onyema, managing director, Air Peace said that the bilateral agreement is only observed by Nigeria and Ghana while many other African countries have refused to comply by the agreement.
“Nigeria has the right to fly into African countries but we are only doing Ghana presently. Those other countries never wanted to answer our emails. We had to send people there to plead with them but they see Air Peace as a threat.
“Senegal has not been here since two years to come and see our facilities to approve us to come. We have written them but they have refused. We have provided everything they want. Cote d’ivoire did it to us because they wanted to protect Air Cote d’ivoire. I wanted to take them to court when they sent for us but gave us only one grand handling service requesting that we pay $4,000 per landing,” Onyema said.
He explained that while Air Cote d’ivoire plies about three frequencies in Nigeria, Cote d’ivoire has refused Nigerian airlines into their country.
“We have gone to Douala, but they also didn’t accept us, it was only Ghana that answered us. We are ready to go into other African countries, we have the facilities but they have refused to allow us.
“In a bid to protect Asky airline, Togo has also refused us going into their country, meanwhile they come to Nigeria and ply Lagos-Abuja routes and even pouch our pilots. African countries set up their airlines with Nigeria as a target,” he said.
“We want government to protect us from foreign airlines as they are not allowing us to go into their country. If they are doing this to us, let us do same to their airlines and let us see if they can survive.
While lamenting the losses it has incurred from airport incidents in the last few days, he said Air Peace has lost over N3 billion to the incidents which occurred in Lagos and Benin airports.
At Lagos airport, two of its aircraft wings clipped while one of the aircraft was being retrieved from where he said many aircraft were parked like cars while Skypower Aviation Handling Company limited (SAHCOL) equipment rammed into another one in Benin airport.
He explained that the three aircraft became ‘Aircraft on Ground’ and were declared unserviceable immediately, adding that it is seriously impacting on their schedules, passengers’ engagements and revenues.
Onyema, who said none of the three damaged aircraft will be in service in the next one week due to magnitude of the damage said, ‘the German company repairing the wings has just told us that one wing costs $650, 000, which amounts to over N300 million. We may be losing over N3 billion during the days the three aircraft would be out of service and the passengers may not understand all these that schedules have to be adjusted to accommodate the losses’.
Ifeoma Okeke
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