In line with the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) call for partnership in the form of consolidation, Nigeria’s flag carrier airline, Medview has concluded plans to interline with airlines, particularly foreign airlines to widen its operations.
However, the carrier wont able to do so until it becomes International Air Transport Association (IATA) Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) certified. Medview awaits to be certified March 2016.
The IOSA certification audit is an internationally recognised and accepted evaluation system designed to assess the operational management and control systems of an airline. IOSA uses internationally recognised audit principles and is designed to conduct audits in a standardised and consistent manner. Airlines are re- evaluated every two years.
Registering for IOSA certification and auditing is not mandatory therefore an airline that does not have IOSA certification may have either failed the IOSA audit or alternatively chosen not to participate.
Small regional airlines generally don’t do the IOSA audit purely because of the cost to have the audit conducted and to implement the likely required changes.
The Business Development Manager of Medview Airlines, Ishaq Na’Allah made the disclosure at an interactive session with travel agents in Abuja.
His words, “We are already working on interline with other carriers. You know that we have been working on IOSA and when we get it, we will interline. We have been looking at this occasion to meet with you, our travel agents, our partners here in Abuja. We are aware that in this business, we cannot do it alone. For a long time, you have been partnering with us and we want you to take this partnership to a higher level.”
For domestic flight operations and following incessant flight delays and cancellations by domestic airlines in the country, the Federal Government recently encouraged and said it was looking on how to make it possible for airlines to interline, with a view to making passengers of delayed and cancelled flights fly with carriers not affected by the syndrome.
Consequently, the aviation regulatory body had commenced consultations with stakeholders on the interlining of tickets among domestic airlines, as part of efforts to assist them to harmonise their operations.
The airline Interlining, also known as interline ticketing, is a voluntary commercial agreement between individual airlines to handle passengers travelling on similar routes, without being surcharged.
Virtually all airlines in Nigeria operate to Abuja from Lagos, a route regarded as the busiest. Not only do they operate to Abuja, they also share almost the same schedule.
One would have expected that two or three airlines would combine their passengers and travel in one aircraft.
Most of them, particularly in the afternoon carry less than 40 passengers in a 120-seater aircraft. A more reasonable and cost effective way for the operators would be for them to agree to combine passengers in a single aircraft to take the passengers to their destination.
In doing that, the operators would minimize their losses by saving aviation fuel which has shot up to the roof top, cut down on airport taxes, navigational charges and in turn become more profitable.
It does not make economic sense for each airline to, for example, fly to Abuja from Lagos with few passengers. They ought to be working together by taking the passengers going to one destination in one aircraft and reap the benefits of saving the cost of each aircraft flying few passengers to that destination.
An airline would find it very difficult to be profitable with airlifting of 40 passengers. Money realized from airlifting 40 or fewer passengers may not even be enough to buy fuel, while other charges by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) and the NCAA would have to be sourced elsewhere.