BASA: FG must protect domestic airlines – Onyeama

The chairman of Air Peace, Allen Onyeama, has frowned at the unfriendly attitudes of foreign airlines, which frustrate the efforts of local carriers by denying them access to foreign routes.
Speaking at a press briefing, Onyeama lamented that such unfriendly attitudes were not in harmony with the Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA) Nigeria has signed with some of the defaulting nations, which would rather protect their airlines than to allow the Nigerian counterpart to reciprocate.

“The minister of aviation, Hadi Sirika, granted us the permission to represent Nigeria as a flag bearer to South Africa, China, USA, Dubai and some other countries even in the face of resentment from certain quarters. How many of these African countries have allowed us to come in? As I’m talking to you, we are only doing Ghana, why? Because other countries have refused to allow us in.

“Ivory Coast never wanted to answer our request. We had to go to them pleading, they didn’t tell us no but we later discovered that one particular airline was using them to frustrate Nigerian carriers, particularly Air Peace. They see us as a threat, you need to see what they do to us in other countries.

“When the Chief Operation Officer represented us in Bahamas, she called me on the phone and I asked her to tell the Cote d’Ivoire people that I will go to court to stop any airline coming to Nigeria whose country doesn’t want to allow us come in.

“I don’t care for whatever it will cost me. I gave them just three weeks to honour our request or I would go to court to stop Air Cote d’Ivoire from coming into Nigeria. And I wanted to make do my threat,” he said.

Onyeama said even though the Ivorian authorities eventually granted the permission, the next challenge was imposition of exorbitant charges on ground handling services just to pose another barrier in disguise.
“They charge $4,000 for one ground handling service. Tell me how you would break even in that kind of harsh environment.

Meanwhile, Air Cote d’Ivoire has been ravaging Nigeria unperturbed. They come in and do whatever they want, nobody cares. They use all sorts of excuses to prevent us. If you are asked to pay $4,000, how many people are you carrying on that aircraft? So, since they are doing this, let us do the same thing to their airlines and let’s see if they will survive,” Onyeama said.

He related another sad experience involving Senegalese authorities where it insisted that the airline must provide full insurance after providing a clean slate of the airline’s equipment – airworthy fleet of aircraft, spare parts and flight integrity records. Even after providing a one-year insurance, the approval hasn’t still been granted till date.
The airline suffered yet another blow with the Togolese authority when it sought to reciprocate the frequencies of ASKY into Togo. The
Togolese authority turned down the proposal with a flimsy excuse that it had already granted permission to Overland to come into their country. Meanwhile, Overland hasn’t even started flying the route. At the same time, ASKY does about four frequencies into Nigeria.

“So even if Overland is coming into their country and it’s doing only two frequencies, we are supposed to do the other two frequencies so that there will be reciprocity in line with bilateral agreement. But the truth is that they don’t want us to come in because they are protecting ASKY.
“And if Togo does not allow Air Peace to come in, by the third week of May, I give them up to 21st of May, if they don’t allow us, between 22nd and 25th of May, I will go to court in Nigeria to stop ASKY from coming into Nigeria. I will do it for whatever it is worth. I will go to the Federal High Court to stop ASKY from coming into this country.
Enough is enough; we have to protect our own,” Onyeama threatened.