By LAWANI MIKAIRU

The Chairman of Discovery Air, Engr. Babatunde Babalola, weekend, said that the regulatory agency, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, was wrong to have suspended its Air Operator’s Certificate, AOC, in January this year following the alleged maltreatment of its passengers in December 2014. Rather, the airline said what NCAA ought to have done was to ground its operations pending when the issues were resolved.

Babatunde added that the suspension of its AOC had led to massive business loss for the airline and hoped its suspension would be lifted very soon for its workers to return to work. He insisted that the offence of the airline did not warrant the suspension of its AOC and stressed that since the airline was not involved in an accident, its AOC ought not to be revoked by NCAA.

He therefore called for consistency in the regulations of the agency.

Babatunde further revealed that since its operations were grounded, the airline had lost at least N1bn. The loss of the N1bn according to him included charters, scheduled operations and other relationships that would have been onboard if the airline’s AOC was still intact. The airline’s operations were suspended on January 8, 2015.

He emphasised that the letter written to the management of the airline on its suspension ordered it to address three issues before it would be allowed to return to operations.

The issues according to him are refunding of airfares to its passengers who were not satisfied with the way and manner they were treated by the airline, payment of compensation to the passengers and welfares of staff, which he said had been resolved by the airline. He agreed that the airline had some little financial issues before it was suspended, but required bridging loan to sustain its operations from financial institutions.

He added, “On the salary welfare of the workers, we had a meeting with them to pay them for the months they have worked and even the January that we were suspended. The other thing we did again was to issue them post-dated cheque for the backlog of salaries we owed them. The cheque would be presented on April 30, which is this month.

“If you are trying to build an enviable aviation industry, then, you have to engage the airlines. You cannot just say ‘you give them seven days to correct some things’. Seven days to do what? It is just too short. If you are going to give seven day, call for a meeting and there would interactions. I don’t want to mention names, if it was the other Director-General, he would tell you what to do and if he discovered that you were not able to rectify it, he would tell you he would send his personnel to work with you to rectify it.”