Yemisi Izuora
Aviation expert, Capt. Dele Ore has warned that granting multiple entries to international airlines into Nigeria will systematically affect growth of domestic carriers.
He also noted that the continuous signing of Bilateral Air Service Agreements, (BASAs), by the Federal Government with several foreign countries among several other unfavourable policies would continue to hamper growth of the airline sub-sector in the country.
The former President Aviation Round Table(ART),who is also an aviation lawyer criticised the granting of multiple entries to foreign airlines without any reciprocity from their Nigerian counterparts.
He said though there was nothing wrong with signing of BASAs with other countries, but that Nigeria as country must benefit from such arrangements.
The Aviation Lawyer was however silent on BASA between Nigeria Qatar, saying that he was yet to see the details of the agreement.
According to him, “Nothing has happened to improve the policies for the airlines. Our policies will soon drown airlines that are operational. We still have multiple entry points for foreign carriers. With that policy, we are killing our domestic carriers.
We are indirectly opening up our airspace courtesy of such agreements”.
He continued, “It is only the ground handling companies that are doing well in the sector while others are crawling. We don’t have enough places to train personnel for the sector and nothing has been done in the past six months of Sen. Hadi Sirika as a Minister of State for Aviation to curtail capital flights in the sector”.
Ore declared that bad policy formulations and implementations of the government in the past led to the early collapse of operating airlines in the country, stressing that despite this, such bad policies still continued unabated by the government.
Ore also warned that with the high level of expatriates taking over positions of local technical personnel, the next 10 years might be worse for the Nigerian aviation industry.