Arik Partners Cranefield Varsity On Manpower Dev

Arik Air Cranefield University in the United Kingdom has entered into agreement to partner for the training and retraining of the airline’s personnel to improve their skills for effective work output and efficiency.

The Managing Director of Arik Airline, Mr Chris Ndulue, said the first step was to create a robust window for training the personnel of the airline to give it managerial of the airline to give it managerial edge in all areas of air transportation from the university’s UK aviation academy.

Mr Ndulue told newsmen recently that the training began with a three-day seminar for the airline’s management staff and covered airline industrial trend, commercial and airline strategy, global trend in the industry as well as aero politics.

Other areas that the partnership would offer training would be the regulatory trend facing the airline industry, airline traffic, demand forecasts and aircraft orders as well as traffic measurements for full service airlines among other topics.

“The aviation industry is dynamic and at Arik Air, we believe we have to be in tune with current trends in the sector. This is the essence of this partnership which will set Arik Air apart from other airlines,” the Managing Director stated.

According to him, the partnership is meant to address the dearth of qualified manpower in the Nigerian aviation sector and to train world class managers for the future of Arik Air and the Nigeria society.

He also disclosed that after the three day training in Lagos, staff members of the airline would be sent to the UK for six weeks training in areas strategic to the operations of the airline.

Also speaking, the leader of the Cranefield University delegation, Dr John Frankie O’ Conneil, an expert in airline management in the department of Air Transport, described Arik Air as one of the leading carriers to watch in Africa because of its unique services.

It would be recalled that for years Nigeria has been lacking in manpower development in the aviation sector, such that indigenous manpower in the industry has aged and becoming extinct, so that a succeeding generation has to be developed and this is what the nation’s biggest airline has started with one of the foremost universities in the world.