Make BASA Fund Available, Expert Says

The Federal Government has been urged to make the Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) fund available to the domestic airlines to enable them meet up with their rising cost of operations.

Mr Amos Akpan, the Managing Director of Capital Airlines, who made the appeal in his speech the Aviation Economic Summit Break fast in Lagos, said the BASA fund is a reciprocity fund available to Nigeria Airways in those days as money paid by airlines like British Airways, Air France and other foreign airlines for operations not carried out by Nigeria Airways in the countries of those airlines.

Mr Akpan said now that the domestic airlines are carrying out the operations that Nigeria Airways should have been doing, they should rightly benefit from the fund.

According to him, “all the airlines in the country are operating at a different time. Right now the cost of operation in Nigeria is higher than the income earned by the airlines. Those who are having fresh fund for now will start experiencing the hard time when they start carrying out “C and “D” checks on their aircraft”.

The Capital Airlines boss said the airlines would not expect that the money be given to the airlines freely, but that the airlines should be able to access it at 7 to 8 per cent interest. “Where it is used to purchase an aircraft, the airlines can be allowed to pay over five years”, he added.

It would be recalled that recently, the Minister of Aviation, Mr Babatunde Omotaba, has assured that government’s position is not to allow Nigerian carriers to go down because of the adverse implication it will have on the nation.

Only recently, the Director-General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation authority (NCAA), Dr Harold Demuren, called for the support of the authority to enable the airlines remain afloat and viable to promote the economy of the nation.

Dr Demuren said the authority is doing this to create an enabling environment for the domestic airlines to operate.

He said to create enabling environment is to ensure that they have good routes where they can make money.