Editor 1
ABUJA - The Minister Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr Festus Keyamo, SAN, on Sunday faulted the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission's (FCCPC) statement on Air Peaces' pricing methodology stating that it was 'careless'.
Keyamo said that the FCCPC should have collaborated with the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) on the matter.
Keyamo said that the agency should have contacted the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) directly instead of going public.
This followed an invitation by the FCCPC which was honoured by the airline’s executives Dec. 2, to address allegations of price gouging and poor service delivery.
However, Keyamo, in an interview on Sunday said: "I think it was a very careless statement, I say that with all apology, by the agency, making such a statement without consulting the core agency involved in regulation, which is the NCAA.
"The power to regulate these airlines and for the airlines to inform about their price increase and all of that is domiciled in NCAA; that is the core agency.
"They should have contacted the NCAA for them to look at the books, which we have been doing, so we would have given them facts. But to single out a few airlines that we are struggling to expose to the world for them to get more enhanced capacity, it was a bit careless," he added.
Keyamo went on to emphasise that the issue at hand was not one of exploitation but rather the airline industry’s capacity limitations, especially regarding aircraft acquisition and servicing routes.
He said: “What we are facing is a problem of capacity of the airlines to acquire aircraft and to service their routes.
"Again, we have things that are totally out of our control, which is the issue of the fluctuation of the forex, the exchange rate, that affects everything in aviation. Everything in aviation is dollar based."
He further mentioned that Nigerian airlines spend majorly foreign exchange due to their need to hire aircraft, which he referred to as wet leasing.
"All of these are foreign exchange, and with the fluctuating nature of our naira against the dollar, you will expect that it will affect also their cost of operation.
"Now, what we are therefore doing is to ensure that we expose them to the markets across the world where they can now access aircraft on very good terms, and this will impact on the prices of tickets and their cost of operation.
"That is what led us to addressing the issue of the practice direction pursuant to the Cape Town Convention. That is the core of the problem of the aviation industry that this president and vice president graciously supported us to get to, and we are there now," he said.
Keyamo also revealed that in January, he would be leading a Nigerian delegation to Dublin to meet major airline financiers to discuss on how to access aircraft at better rates, a move he believes will positively impact ticket prices and operational costs.
"All the major airline financiers, aircraft financiers, and liaisons, are all gathered there (in Dublin), and for the first time, they have invited Nigeria, because of what we have done.
"Also because of the fact that all these efforts we have made to make them access these markets around the world, has increased our compliance score from 49 per cent to 75.5 per cent for the first time in history, all credit to the policies of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu."
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