The President of TopBrass Airlines and a member of Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), Roland Iyayi, has said the 22-year-old age limitation policy for aircraft by the Federal Government in 2001 had done incalculable damage to airline business till this very moment.
The law limiting the age of aircraft coming into the country, according to him, does not bid well for the growth of the industry, stressing that the sooner the government look into it, and takes cognisance of the various issues, the better for the industry.
He said this was necessary because the country created a law that is not known to any other part of the world in this industry; a situation, he stated, had made the country a butt of jokes, “because we created a situation for them to exploit us”.
Speaking to New Telegraph on the sidelines of the Quarterly Business Meeting of the Aviation Safety Round Table (ASRT) at the weekend in Lagos, Iyayi, who is also the Vice Chairman of the Ministerial Task Force on illegal private charter operations and related matters in the aviation industry set up by the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo this year, said the action was politically motivated.
He alleged that the action was a political move to stop Albarka Airlines from continuing with its operation. The carrier operated for less than two years before the age policy pushed it out of the market.
“We may not know this. The airline at the time, I will say the name, it’s no longer in existence, Albarka Air. Albarka Air at the time had about seven airplanes in the U.S. ready to come into the country.
The owner of Albarka Air was in the opposite part of the political divide. What happened? It was determined that the only way to stop Albarka from coming into the market at the time was to impose an age restriction.
“I think it is important that we take note. When you look at what is going on generally in the domestic space, all the airplanes we are operating today, even in our domestic commercial market, are more than 22 years old, except the likes of Air Peace, Ibom Air, ValueJet, Overland that are operating some new airplanes,” he said.
Iyayi further stated that the age restriction that was brought up at the time was 20 years, explaining that when it was determined that the Boeing 727 presidential jet at the time was 21 years old, then it became 22 years.
He noted that the story was probably not known to the public, maintaining that the reason that particular age limitation was introduced was purely political and one that found its way into the country’s aviation law books.
He further stated that the country shot itself in the leg by adopting an age limitation for aeroplanes that are still flown all over the world. His said: “In the domestic market today, as of 2014, we had about 87 private jets.
As of today, we have about 167 in our domestic market. 80 per cent of those airplanes are foreign registered. The reason they are foreign registered is simply because they are older than 22 years old.
So what happens? These airplanes are brought into the country on the foreign register. They come into the NCAA and get a Permit for NonCommercial Flights (PNCF).
“But the intent, ab initio, is to operate commercially. So they come in on PNCF. They are older than 22. They are flying in our airspace and they continue to fly in our airspace because on a six-month basis, the CAA simply just does a CAA renewal.
There is no restriction on how long they can be before they leave our airspace. We say to ourselves, we want to make sure safety is upheld. We must make sure everything is good. Therefore, there’s a 22-year age ban on every commercial aircraft coming to the country. We shoot ourselves in the foot.
“We are talking about growth. The growth we anticipate will not come. We must note that most of the time, we come up with policies, our policies are not founded on any empirical data.
Those policies are founded just by the whims and caprices of whoever is in office at the time for more of a solution to a political problem rather than a safety problem.”
The airline chief pointed out that getting newer airplanes by airline operators was not realistic going by the crises two aircraft manufacturers, Boeing and Airbus are going through at the moment that has led to delays or shortage of aircraft delivery to carriers.
With what has happened all over the world, most major airlines had planned that by 2025 they would engage in a global fleet renewal plan and the fleet renewal plan.
Typically, when that happens, it means that the current fleet is put in the open market and they take new deliveries. Iyayi noted that Nigerian domestic airlines were looking at acquiring new aircraft on the premise of the Cape Town Convention practice direction had just been put in place.
“For the record as of October 2024, the single airplane manufacturing Airbus had orders of about 10,888 A320s the Neo series. 10 orders. Of that, they had delivered 3,607. There is a backlog of about 7,000 airframes. Boeing with the B737 Max had an order of 4,793.
Please follow and like us:
