Nigeria Air to launch before June – Sirika

Despite litigation against Nigeria Air to commence operation, the Federal Government has assured that the airline will commence operations before the end of the first quarter (Q1) this year.

The Federal Government also said contrary to claims that the airline was taken to court by Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), it said only five airlines took it to court.

The airlines according to it are; Air Peace, Max Air, United Nigeria Airlines, Topbrass Aviation, and Azman Air.

The Minister of Aviation, Sen. Hadi Sirika disclosed this in an interview posted on YouTube on the 2nd of February by AeroTime.

On the fate of the proposed national carrier, Nigeria Air, the minister said: “Nigeria Air will launch shortly. There is a process to having an airline and that process is driven by Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) the process comes in different phases for those processes to happen.

“Being a PPP, it has to go through Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) by establishing a consulting firm, and transaction advisers to make a business case and to know if it is a viable project and that has been done. It took two years, and the Outline Business Case was produced and approved by ICRC and then taken to the federal executive council which was also approved. Before now, we went to the public to invite bidders which is a procurement process.

“The process ended up having Ethiopian Airline as the partner with 49 per cent, 5 per cent for the government of Nigeria, and 46 per cent for Nigerian entrepreneurs and companies coming together to own the rest.

“They have applied for Air Transport Licence (ATL) which is being issued and now they are applying for AOC and the process has gone very far.

“I believe in the next one or two weeks from today, they should be able to get the AOC issued and that will signal the beginning of the carrier itself being flying but we have been working for the past six years to establish it and we took this long because we wanted to be very diligent.

(TNT)