Arik Boss Backs Fly Nigeria Act

The Managing Director of Arik Air, Chris Ndukwe says the “Fly Nigeria Act” will improve the capacity of Nigerian airlines to operate international routes if the bill is passed into law by the National Assembly.

Ndukwe who was speaking in an interview with newsmen weekend said the act would not only develop Nigerian aviation industry, but would also ensure the growth of the indigenous airlines.

According to him, this is good for Airk Air and other Nigerian airlines. We are prepared to take advantage of it. We are prepared in terms of service delivery. We will continue to work on it. We are young airline, we are growing.

“Multiple designations do not allow domestic airlines to survive. It reduces traffic for domestic airlines. Every country has a way of protecting its industry. It favours the U.S. when they have open sky because they have nature aviation industry. We have to be mindful of the age of our industry”, he said.

He also condemned the hoarding of flight tickets by staff of airlines and described as unacceptable a situation where touts would be allowed to operate at the nation’s airports with impunity.

The Airk boss said that his company had taken a decision on the matter, saying that any staff caught conniving and selling flight tickets at higher price to passengers would be sacked.

“A professional staff will not participate in that despicable act. There are young men known as touts. They destabilise our services in Nigeria. We cannot continue to operate that way where we have touts everywhere. Some people patronise these touts. They create problems and contribute to the discomfort of the real passengers.

According to him, if there were no touts the staff would not have those to operate with, but that does not justify the activities of the staff. We dismiss when we get them.

He said that the Arik Air had introduced name tags and made it as a rule that every staff must wear a name tag to be easily identified by passengers.

“We shall fine-tune our flight schedule, but one of the things that affect flight schedule is reliability of the facilities at airports and the larger you are as a carrier the more you experience the problem, so it limits the growth of the airline,” he added.

Reward Akwu