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Says West Africa’s leading airline chief
Allen Onyema, chairman, Air Peace
Sade Williams
Losses estimated at N15 billion annually suffered by airlines in Nigeria are largely caused by the behaviour of passengers, says Allen Onyema, chairman and chief executive officer of Air Peace Limited.
Onyema, quoting the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), said airlines contribute little to the cause of flight delays, but in Nigeria, besides weather, VIP Movement and tech (Aircraft on Ground (AOG), passenger behaviour is a major cause of delays and cancelled flights because Nigerian travellers have not embraced the culture of rescheduling when flights are cancelled, a policy that follows international standards and recommended practices.
He said the insistence of passengers whose flights are cancelled to be airlifted first the following day gives rise to disruption of flights, which snowballs into weeks of delays and cancellations.
Onyema explained that airlines schedule the number of flights that must be operated by each aircraft but when a previous flight is cancelled passengers’ insistence that they must be airlifted first before the airline operates its normal schedule disrupts flight operations and emphasised that what passengers whose airlines are cancelled do is to reschedule their flights in accordance to the existing airline schedule.
In doing so, subsequent flights will not be disrupted, delays and cancellations will drastically minimise and insisted that this is the system that is operated in other parts of the world, except in Nigeria.
“Let me tell you why delays and cancellations will persist in this country. Number one, apart from safety, apart from security, apart from weather and other issues, it’s unruly passenger behaviour, a misunderstanding of how airlines’ scheduled operations are supposed to be run, is a major cause of flight delays.
“When weather is the cause of the delay or leads to cancellation at the end of the day, it is not the business of the airline to fly the passenger whose flight was cancelled first thing the next morning, no. All over the world, aviation is the same worldwide. The convention is, the passenger is expected to reschedule to the next available date. That is how it is done. In Nigeria, you want to fly, and you have a three hour delay because of the weather. And [by] the time [the] weather clears, you want to go in, and there is airport closure, because most of the airports don’t run at night. And the passenger will tell you, even though you put us in a hotel, we will be the first ones to fly in the morning. It is not done like that, you reschedule to the next available date, because it is called scheduled flight operations,” Onyema explained.
He said that what happens is that in Nigeria, in the morning, those that could not fly the previous day will be the first people you are going to fly and when you do this, you have disrupted the schedule of that morning.
“Each aircraft does about six to eight flights a day; so, it is not only one disruption; you are talking about a massive eight flights disrupted for that day. I will give you an example. The other day we were flying into Warri, we could not land because of the weather. The pilot hovered for about 15 minutes, but for safety he diverted to Enugu because Benin was also covered by bad weather. They stayed on the ground in Enugu for about an hour or two, then the weather cleared. The aircraft was fueled. The weather cleared for them to take off to Warri but the Warri airport was closed because it is a sunset airport.
“The pilot announced the closure of the airport because it is a sunset airport and said that the flight would return to base, which is Abuja. With that announcement there was pandemonium everywhere, as the passengers started protesting against that decision. They brought the aircraft down and the captain was almost crying. They kept that aircraft on the ground in Enugu for four hours. They said we should put them in a hotel in Enugu. Why should I put you in a hotel in Enugu? Did I create the weather? Did I create the airport? That was a force majeure,” Onyema said.
He also explained that the aircraft refused to allow take off from Enugu to Abuja was programmed to operate four other flights that included Kano and Port Harcourt, pointing out that passengers at the other airports waiting for the flight would not know that it was passengers that forced the aircraft not to take off.
“Those extra five flights you will start first to bring in passengers of the previous day will disrupt 40 flights in today’s flight schedule. It goes on like that for the next two weeks because you can never recover. You will never be able to recover, given the situation that most of your airport closes by 6:00 pm. In fact, you can’t recover. It will only ease off after two weeks. God saves you if within those two weeks they don’t cause another problem for you; if that happens, it continues,” he said.
