The Aviation Roundtable (AR), the sector’s watchdog says that since its prosperous beginning about 80 yeas ago, the nation’s aviation industry has continued to drift like a rudderless ship.

In its assessment of the sector, The Aviation Roundtable described the state of the industry as comatose, observing that the attainment of Category One status handed over by the United States Federal Aviation Administration seems to be the only achievement recorded by the industry where airlines are closing shop with terminal managers complaining of huge loses.

AR President, Captain Dale Ore said the aviation industry had performed below expectation and explained that giving the strides recorded by other countries which began aviation business at the same time with Nigeria, the industry in Nigeria is in doldrums.

Ore noted that foreign airlines operating in and out of Nigeria are doing very well while the participation of Nigerian carriers is still negligible due to constraints brought about by bad policies of government.

According to Ore, a cumulative impact of policies, bad decisions, the market, competition and financing difficulty is destroying the Nigerian aviation industry, adding “the economy has so much to do with its strength. Obviously, the biggest problem seems to be lack of attention”.

He explained that Nigerian carriers, in the past 50 years have been grappling with low capitalisation, high indebtedness to creditors, low capacity utilisation, wet and dry leasing of aircraft and unstable manpower retention rate which are symptoms of an economically weak industry.

The AR President said the interest rates charged by banks and financial institutions on loans are too high for any airlines to borrow and operate profitably, pointing out that to aggravate the situation, the failure of some airlines that have gone under or have been distressed are not encouraging to attract investment in the industry.