Barring any urgent intervention,
With only two aged aircraft,
Aero Contractors, which provided shuttle service for oil and gas industry for decades and extended its service to scheduled flight operations since 2000 has become moribund with over N50 billion debt overhang.
THISDAY investigations revealed that economic recession occasioned by the COVID-19 lockdown and protracted low season after December heavy passenger traffic demand, culminated to the financial drought of the airline.
It was learnt that currently, the airline finds it difficult to fuel its existing fleet.
The Managing Director of the airline, Captain
He said that high cost of foreign exchange, high maintenance cost, high cost of aviation fuel and low traffic are responsible for the bad condition of the airline.
According to him, "Maintenance cost is high, foreign exchange is not available and the high fuel price in addition to the fact that after the high Christmas season, there was low passenger traffic from later January till Easter period. Then we are also contending with overhead, which is so much.
"When you have no traffic and what you are generating cannot defray operating cost, you cannot survive. We are still operating but from the rate we are going we may shut down anytime."
He also explained that because the aircraft in the fleet are old and breakdown very often, the cost of maintenance is high, "and spares have to be imported and even insuring the aircraft requires foreign exchange."
When contacted, the immediate past CEO of the airline, Captain
Sanusi who took over the airline in
"The airline had two aircraft, which were due for major checks, the C-check, passenger confidence was low and three of the airline's aircraft were in maintenance facilities overseas. The airline was at the brink of collapse when we took it over, "he said.
Sanusi further explained that the airline was under receivership, as it was being managed by the
THISDAY learnt that the AMCOM had invested so much money in the airline but was not ready to invest more, a situation that lead to Sanusi and his team to consider having the C-check conducted in-house.
"The engineers in the airline went to work, they took the
"The success of the C-check opened door for us because it restored passenger confidence, knowing that we had the ability to maintain our aircraft and from 40 to 50 per cent load factor, our passenger traffic grew to 80 per cent.
"AMCON was elated that they continued to support us. We sold assets we didn't need and we brought back one of the three aircraft ferried overseas for maintenance and now had two
"We bought the engines of United Nigeria Airlines
"The COVID-19 lockdown was the undoing of the airline, like many others in other parts of the world, "Sanusi said, adding, "It was during the lockdown that the Maintenance, Overhaul and Repair (MRO) facility came alive and began to engage in third party maintenance, which is maintenance of other airlines' aircraft."
"Immediately after the lockdown we were ready to go into business. Passenger demand was unprecedented. The prospect of Aero was very good. It had a chance to recover, but the biggest challenge was fleet renewal. Average age of the aircraft was late 20s or early 30s. We communicated to the shareholders.
'We did not have the ability to do D-check, which was heavy check, but we later got approval and we conducted D-check on the
Aero, is described as a fully made airline because it has scheduled operations wing, rotary wing, MRO and training school; no other airline in
THISDAY learnt that for the airline to survive some of the workers had to be put on redundancy and at the peak of revival it had about 400 staff, about 100 in schedule wing, 10 in training and the others on administrative and maintenance and whenever it had more jobs on maintenance it recalled more technical staff.
On why the airline was going under, Sanui said, "The airline needs fleet renewal without which it cannot survive. External factors include high cost of aviation fuel, scarcity and high cost of forex, low passenger traffic, which was extraordinarily very low. When I left the airline had a good chance of survival, even coming out of receivership. But it needed strict financial management," he said.
A former top manager of the airline said that the genesis of
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