Foreign airlines are not adding value –Medview MD

Alhaji Bankole, who disclosed this at an interactive session with journalists in his office recently, said with the revenue profile of domestic and international carriers released last year by the NCAA, the foreign airlines are not adding value to Nigeria’s economy.
The NCAA said last year that foreign airlines earned N231 billion from ticket sales while domestic carriers earned a miserable N73 billion in 2013. He said domestic airlines should actually be making more than foreign operators. Foreign airlines dominate the international routes, he said.
The Medview boss said the figure of reference could probably be more.
Explaining, he said, “take for instance, the operations of Emirates. Before now, they operated 779 frequencies only to Lagos. It is simple arithmetic. They operate two flights daily, per week. Multiply two by seven and then multiply it by four in a week and multiply it by 12, it is over 707 frequencies. Now, they are given Abuja; and they could even be given Kano, and Port Harcourt. What is left for indigenous airlines to do? So, this is a big problem,” he said.
“If you add the frequencies together, average cost of flying Emirates Airlines first class seat is $10,000. I am a frequent flier on Emirates Business class and it goes between N600,000 and N800,000, just add the figure together and that of the economy and do the numbers, it is over N60 billion,” he said.
According to him, the foreign operators employ just a few Nigerians thus questioning their value addition even to employment rate.
“Go to these airlines, Qatar, Etihad, all of them, they don’t employ many Nigerians. The few Nigerians they employ are paid peanuts; so where are we? They come, discharge and go. They don’t bring their own people. They don’t bring Arabs to live or do business here. They carry Nigerians largely. So, these are the games. This is food for thought for our country,” he suggested.