Following plummeting passenger demand and lockdown, the eight domestic airlines on Friday suspended flight operations.
Also, over 6,000 airline workers have been rendered redundant, with a few airlines sending their workers on compulsory leave following the shutting down of their operations., Air Peace, which possess the highest fleet of 27 aircraft has over 2,000 workers.Aero has over 850 employees and has four planes in its fleet as well as a functional hangar where routine aircraft maintenance is carried out on a commercial basis for other airlines.
Overland Airways has also parked seven planes and the number of employees could not also be ascertained as of the time of filing this report. While most of the airlines have yet to decide whether to pay their workers during the two to three weeks break, Azman Air issued a circular to all its workers to go on compulsory leave without pay.
The eight carriers will be losing billions of naira in revenue during the shutdown, aside from fixed cost which runs into billions of naira. “We lose N100m daily and we have been doing that in the last three weeks. People are no longer flying. We now attract passengers by lowering the fares in the past three weeks.”
He said, “At the end of the day, airlines would have lost some money and if the Federal Government does not intervene in the form of bailout, people will lose their jobs in the entire aviation industry. According to the former managing director of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, the airlines will need government grants to enable them to pay April salaries.
Hathiramani said the Central Bank of Nigeria would need to introduce an intervention and stimulus that would help the carriers from failing as a result of the impact of COVID-19 on the airline industry. “We are in expansion mode now. But unfortunately, we can’t do that now as a result of the pandemic. You cannot be taking delivery of new planes in this kind of situation. We have been forced to park all the planes in our fleet for now until the situation improves,” he said
Considering the burden of losses that airline operators might incur over the shutdown of the critical sector, Meggisson said it would be imperative to give the stimulus to domestic airlines to create an enabling environment to bounce back
Mr. COVIK 1-9 have shut down Lagos & Abuja for 2 weeks without adequately providing help for millions who has no means of survival even prior to the advent of Coronavirus.
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