Dana Air Loses N18bn To Grounding

Dana Air Management
says it has lost about $25 million (about N18 billion) revenue since its operation was grounded on October 5, 2013, by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).
This was disclosed in a statement by the airline’s Head of Communications Mr Tony Usidamen, who hinted that the airline’s financial report for 2012 showed that the airline, which is Nigeria’s third largest carrier with a fleet of seven aircraft carrier with N14 billion last year had so far lost about N4 billion in revenue in 2013 due to the suspension of its services.
Usideamen said since the airline’s inaugural flight on November 10, 2008, Dana Air had completed 21, 915 flights carrying about 18 million passengers with an on time performance of about 90 per cent.
In a fresh appeal letter to the Minister of Aviation Ms Stella Oduah, Usidamen lamented that since NCAA directed the management of Dana Air to immediately suspend its flight operations to allow for an operational audit, nothing had been done.
He said as a result of the indefinite suspension an with no clear direction from the NCAA as to how the audit process would proceed, the airline directed its Nigerian and expatriate staff to proceed on compulsory leave without pay, with a promise to recall members of staff as soon  as the audit was completed.
Usidamen said it was the uncertainty occasioned by the alleged inaction of the NCAA regarding the audit three weeks that about 540 directly employed members of staff of Dana Air wrote an open letter to NCAA on October 31, this  year, pleading with it to commence the audit.
Reacting to Dana Air’s statement, the General Manager, Public Affairs of NCAA, Mr Fan Ndubuoke, said the airline’s operations was grounded for safety and technical reasons, noting that the aircraft in the fleet of the airline had recorded unusual number of engine failures which has not been experienced in the past by scheduled operation aircraft in the country.
Mr Ndubuoke said it was engine failure that caused the crash of last year which killed 153 people on board, stressing that the airline should stop appealing to emotions and face the reality which was in order to avoid the loss of human lives in air accident.
He said the external audit team was expected to arrive the country soon to ascertain whether the airline would continue operation or it would be grounded until it changed its fleet.
“The external auditors will arrive this weekend.  NCAA can do the audit but Dana has been having engine snags and after the crash they were audited but they continued to have the problem, that is why NCAA decided to secure the services of external auditors”, Ndubuoke declared.