By Kenneth Ehigiator
Last week, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Aero Contractors, Fixed Wing, Mr. Richard Boswell, spoke with Vanguard on a number of issues confronting domestic airline operations in the country.

He also spoke on what the airline was doing to reposition its operations in the aftermath of recent problems it had with its bankers, which militated against its erstwhile seamless operations.  Excerpts:

What would you say are the major challenges confronting domestic airline operations in the country?
The cost of operations within Nigeria is high; there were lot of charges associated with the aviation sector which is why we have been showcasing to the government for many months now, so that we can find way to reducing the cost to the industry.

Hopefully we are here to address the public any cost that comes to us ultimately.  We are doing the best that we can  to make our tickets affordable to the public.
What has been the response of the government?

We have been told that a couple of  measures is imminent but we are yet to get the full detail of what that actually means.  We are looking at two areas.  One, to find the means of reducing the day to day cost of operation, either by way of getting the cost of aviation fuel or to get ways of moderating regulatory charges.  The second area is, if there could be a mechanism to reduce the cost of borrowing  which allow a new structure that would enable us to expand our operations.

Recently, you introduced the N500 fuel surcharge. What has been the response of passengers to it?
I think the traveling public are quite grateful that we are trying to be as transparent as possible with the price of our tickets.  The whole idea behind the fuel surcharge is to mimic the airlines in America and Europe where the operators are transparent and if the cost of the fuel goes up and and fare charges are high and hopefully when the cost of fuel comes down again, we cannot but to take the back the price downwards.

I also learnt that in the aftermath of the problems you had with Oceanic Bank, your helicopter operations in the Niger Delta almost ground to a halt.  So, what is the situation right now?

Yes, you are right; we did have challenges with our negotiations with oceanic bank. We have spent a lot of time reaching a new agreement but the case at hand now is that we have a new agreement signed with oceanic bank now which is been structured in form of  the historic desk that has occurred.

We also structure and signed new goals with CHC and our promise of fire helicopter to the market, we have managed to break a 10 year deal with CHC and we have fully committed technical department for 10 years that is going to create a solid foundation to build helicopter in the whole of Nigeria but especially in the Niger Delta.
How many aircraft do you have in your fleet now, and what other routes are you considering exploring?

The combination of helicopter and fixed wing are over 20 aircraft. We are looking to extend our operations  to Africa with the number of West Africa routes which we hope to get before the end of the year and other things depends on how the negotiation we are able to do. We have been looking again before the year rounds up.

Are you looking at the international operations?
We are definitely looking at a number of issues which we need to get on purpose and getting the authorization to do it  and are certainly module up to do that. We will be looking to the government by now.

You say you are looking at issues, what issues?
One of the issues is how to get CAT 1 and how Nigeria can operate directly to Europe or the United States . We are predominantly a regional airline with focus on what we do to reduce price of the ticket to the Nigerian public and we don’t want to get too carried away. Our main focus is bent on reducing local fare for the Nigeria people.

There appears to be some threat to your hold in the Nigeria market at the moment, Arik, Air Nigeria, So, how are you contending with all these?
I think that competition is good, it keeps us more to concentrate on what we intend to do and it keeps the fare down for the traveling public. We intend to remain to a lot of people the biggest Nigeria domestic carrier.  We are not afraid of competition.

There had been a groundswell of complaints against your operations by some of your customers.  Some complain about flight delays and cancellations?  How are you remedying all these?

During the negotiation with the bank, we found out that there are a lot of couple of payments which we wanted to be made which led to some obstruction of spare parts coming in and that led to one or two flights being cancelled and now that we have structured the deal with the bank, we have put that behind us, moving forward, we have been able to learn from our lesson and we now have a solid foundation due to the new agreement with Oceanic Bank and with CHC which has  further boosted our confidence that we can be bigger that we are now in West Africa in the future.
How would you rate Nigeria’s aviation industry at the moment?

I think the Nigeria aviation industry is potentially very strong. It is a little bit from regulatory charges and cost of borrowing and if they can fix it, I am quite sure that the aviation sector will be transformed to become a world leader.
Where do you place it in the next five years?

Let’s see what comes out of the government.   At Aero our plans is totally ambitious. We are trying to double the number of our aircraft and bring new even more modern aircraft.

Do you intend to go into an interlining agreement with any of the international carriers, with a view to helping them distribute their passengers at the domestic level?

It is clearly something which the big international carriers and Aero took part most of the time. It is a possibility, we haven’t got any firm plan but we will continue to talk to a lot of people about that.