Air Nigeria Resumes Long Hub Operations, Soon

The board of directors and the management of the Nigeria’s flag carrier, Air Nigeria, says the airline would return to its long hub operations to resume flights to Johannesburg in South Africa and London in United Kingdom very soon.

Managing Director of the airline, Mr. Kinfe Kahssaye said the decision had been reached for the airline to return to the long hub it hitherto dominated before the turnaround embarked upon by the current management.

Mr. Kahssaye noted that the decision would be implemented in such a way that they would be profitable to the airline and comfortable to the passengers, pointing out that the airline lost a lot of money because of its long hub operations in the past.

“We have tried to identify why we lost so massively at the time we were flying there and we are addressing that. Already, we are making decisions to return there and we hope to do it right this time and that will be done very soon. When we return, we shall go to the United States of America and South Africa”, he stressed.

The airline boss stated that the country had the operating environment and the market for the airline to operate profitably, adding that so far, about four per cent of the total population of Nigeria still embrace flying.

Dismissing the notion in some quarters that the current indigenous airlines could not make turnover in their operations due to their high numbers, Kahssaye emphasised  that the aviation  industry was still  growing  and that the airlines would soon break-even  in their  operations.

He  insisted that the problem facing the Nigerian aviation industry was not the market size but the  development of the capacity for the airlines to build  a competitive  market  and profitable one, predicting that aviation operations in Africa would improve  and mature in the 21st  century while many private  business operators would invest in the sub-sector.

Kahssaye said: “Africa as  a growing economy with over a billion population and with the resources that we have in both human  and natural, Africa will be transformed and  modernised in this 21st  century and so, many people will explore it”, pointing out that in Africa, aviation is still not mature unlike in America and Europe that is fully matures as well as Asia.

According to him, there is domestic market  in Nigeria that is one of  biggest in Africa as the country has about 150  million people as at now, out of which 5 million people are traveling by air, which indicates that there is a very big room for growth.

Meanwhile, two former executives of Air France have been accused of fixing the prices of air cargo in Chicago, said the US Justice Department.

The incidents were the latest in a long running  price-fixing probe that has ensured twenty-one  airlines and 21 executives. The former Executive Vice President of the cargo division of Air France, Mr. Mac Boudier and the former Vice President  of the cargo division of sales and marketing of the airline, Mr. Jean Charles Foucault  are facing charges of conspiring  with other air cargo carriers  and  their  executives to push up prices.