Nigeria's National carrier to rake in Billions of Dollars

The race to win a bid for an investment stake in a Nigerian Carrier project has started. Some foreign airlines, aircrafts and part suppliers and institutional investors have started making their pitches, in a bid to partake in investments towards a Nigerian National carrier, a multi billion dollar project in a mega multi billion dollar industry. The stakes are very high in this race, and it is clearly a winner takes all. The National carrier will most certainly enjoy the choicest slots on routes, in a market with one of the highest load factors in the world.

British Airways may fly to New York from London 10 times daily but the revenue it makes from one daily flight from Lagos to London generates more revenue to the airlines than three of such flights to New York. Nigerian and class consciousness!

This explains why the Lagos and Abuja routes are the most lucrative destinations to the premium carriers that operate into the country, including BA, Emirates, Virgin Atlantic, Air France, Lufthansa, Delta Air Lines and KLM.

The load factor is usually high from top to bottom, which means that the first and business classes in these airlines fill up first before the economy.The enormous revenue these cabins generate can be gleaned from the fact that fares from the few seats in the first class cabin of BA is more than the total revenue generated from the hundreds of seats in the economy class. This is same with the other airlines. Exactly why when the Arik issue occurred in London a few years back, over landing slots and the FG threatened to ban BA, Shivers went down the spine of 10 Downing Street.

The committee at the ministry of aviation confirmed the receipt of various proposals and recommendations, which if implemented by the government will have a positive effect on the Industry. The report on these was received by the permanent secretary, ministry of aviation Mrs Binta Bello. President Buhari is said to be keen on making this happen as a source of income to the government.