The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, has said that the regular flight delays and cancellations by airline operators in Nigeria are both down to inadequate capacity.
Hw recently revealed that FG is working hard to develop policies that will improve the country’s aviation ecosystem.
Speaking during the flag-off ceremony of the revised insurance regulation for leased aircraft in Nigeria, Keyamo revealed that with the implementation of the revised insurance guidelines for leased aircraft in the country, airline operators would enjoy a more conducive environment to access more aeroplanes.
He believes that accessing more aircraft can definitely go a long way towards tackling incessant flight disruptions and other issues within the sector.
According to him, he has done his best to evolve key policies since he was elected to oversee the affairs of the flight industry, and his plan remains to make the aviation ecosystem in Nigeria more investor-friendly.
“Since we came to office, we have done our best to evolve policies, to develop policies that will make the entire aviation ecosystem in Nigeria more investor-friendly, and also to make it especially very conducive for our local operators.
Our focus is to empower our local operators to ensure that the ease of doing business is very much enhanced in Nigeria, especially given the conditions under which we operate and we have had this problem of insurance on dry-leased aircraft in Nigeria.
Today, we have a complete revised insurance regulation on leased aircraft in Nigeria, which is the official Nigerian position,” he said.
Keyamo announced that the government is currently exploring options to end the cancellation issues that keep plaguing private flights, because before holding the erring aviation companies accountable, the issue must be addressed first.
The minister is of the opinion that rather than talking down on private operators who have been culpable of late, and advocating for external solutions that will negatively impact the local sector, the government prefers to discuss the current challenges and come up with solutions to eradicate them.
He reiterated that the responsibility is on the government to ensure the policies are right for private operators to overcome all of the problems crippling their service.
“We are very concerned about issues of delays and cancellations of flights, but we know that this has to do with the capacities of the local operators, each of their capacities, to also get access to aircraft.
We know it is not fun also for a private business to be cancelling its flights or delaying its flight. It’s not fun on their part. They are not sadists. There’s a problem with capacity. They have a problem, and the government needs to look into those problems, try and solve those problems, and then we will now hold them accountable, and this is the approach of this government.
Instead of running down your private operators, running down your businesses, talking down on them, and even looking for external people to come and destroy their businesses, we thought as a government, when I came to office, we sat down with them. What are your problems? One by one, let us take them, and these are the problems we are addressing one by one. Access, first of all, confidence in our aviation ecosystem.
Nobody wanted to bring an aircraft here. Nobody wanted to bring an aircraft here because of insurance policies, lack of confidence in our judicial system, lack of confidence in our various government agencies and inability to ensure and guarantee safety of their equipment here.
We have addressed most of these problems but there’s still work to be done, but we are trudging on. So, as a government, we know that we have a responsibility to make sure that the policies are right for the private operators to overcome the challenges so that they can have access to more aircraft, service more routes, and not delay or cancel flights,” he added.
