Arik Air, Lufthansa Partner On Facility Maintenance

Nigeria’s major carrier, Arik Air is partnering with Lufthansa Technik to establish a world-class maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility in Nigeria.

The chairman of Arik Air, Joseph Arumemi-Ikhide disclosed this in Lagos during the 6th anniversary celebration of the airport.

He said the facility would be built in line with international standards, including that of the International Aviation Safety Assessment Programme (IASA) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United States.

“And the MRO we are setting up with Lufthansa is global. It is  not strictly for Arik alone. I just want to make that one very clear. Lufthansa sent us Malta; the base of Lufthansa is Hamburg, but they have this type of facility they want to build for us in Malta.

“What we made very clear to Lufthansa is that we want an MRO that will be global. Someone can come from Phillippines, some can come from France, but one problem that we have, which I don’t know, except government takes a very strong step; we are looking for NGs, Next Generation aircraft. We are thinking about B737=200. We won’t maintain all that, but we may maintain B737=400,” he added.

Nigerian airlines lose billions of Naira Ferrying their aircraft oversees for repairs and sometimes when such MRO facilities are saturated with demands and work, the airlines will  have to wait for space.

Meanwhile, the Arik Air boss has disclosed that the airline had paid N25.7 billion to Nigerian banks as interest on loans and charges in the past six years.

He said that the airlines’ got N10billion from the airlines’ intervention fund and commended the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria for the support received so far.

“Now, they said we cannot borrow money from bank unless we get approval from AMCON which has been helpful. The intervention they are talking about, Arik got only N10billion at 7 per cent interst,” he said.