The Sun News Online

When Michael McTighe said at the start off of Arik Air about 15 months ago that it was going to be a market leader, a cross section of the aviation industry felt it was one of those boastings from a white sojourner who wants to impress his host.

However, today, their views have changed as the picture McTighe earlier painted was not overdrawn. Rather, a host of the aviation community are shocked that it grew much more than what the Managing Director hitherto said.

Unlike other domestic carriers who stuck tenaciously on the lucrative routes for profit sake, Arik Air on its own is slowly but steadily extending its operations into as many destinations as possible for the sake of Nigeria’s socio-economic development.
He attributes the success of the company to strategic business programme aimed at giving Nigerians and the traveling public in general the best in air travel.
Part of the fruits of this business initiative is the inseperable bonding the airline now has with various African nations who are craving for it to be their national carrier.
This request apart, a lot of other black African nations want the airline to fly into their countries for business should the first request fails.

Today, Arik Air has not only come out to be a fully established company, put somewhat a pacesetter constantly raising the standards of air travel for the better.
Having ensured dominance on the domestic scene, the airline is set to hit the West Coast competing favourably with others in its ranks, but it’s already positioning itself to be the market leader both in Nigeria and the West African region.
The Arik Air boss still believes the country’s aviation industry has room for growth. He has thus thrown his weight behind the various reforms of the Federal Government, which he says portends a brighter future for the sector.
In this interview McTighe shares his experience so far in the country and the plans for regional operations.

Excerpts:
Opening new routes
We’ll keep opening as many destinations as possible offering quality service. We said we’re the Wings of Nigeria and we want to live up to that name. Sokoto is the latest for now and we’ll add others soon. We’re looking at Akure and other places as well. We want to integrate various cities together.

Incentives from Sokoto government
We’ve not received any incentives yet from the Sokoto State government. We’ve been talking to the governor about some form of support but nothing yet at the moment. But primarily, we chose to come to Sokoto because it’s our primary objective. We want to link the various regions together and thus make all parts of Nigeria accessible for the members of the traveling public. When we started flying about 15 months ago, you could hardly link Abuja from the South South without coming to Lagos. Now, we have Calabar-Abuja, Port Harcourt-Abuja, Enugu-Abuja and all of that. It’s indeed our plan to link more and more cities together. That’s why we say we’re the wings of Nigeria. We’ve really created a very unique strategy to link various cities in Nigeria together and adding Sokoto to our growing list of destinations simply shows that.

Next level
The next level for us will be regional flights. We’ll expand our regional operations and also integrate local operations with regional and ultimately we move into the international flights. We’ll tactically integrate the short and long haul flights and thereby creating a hub and spokes system in the process.

Invitation from foreign countries
At the moment, we’ve been approached by virtually every country in West Africa to fly into their country. It’s a matter of great pride for Arik for some black African countries to come to us and say please, can you come and export what you have done in Nigeria to our country? So, we’re really proud of that because about 15 years ago, nobody would’ve believed that Sierra Leone, Gambia, Cameroon will be knocking on our doors and say please will you be our national carrier which is the case today. As you know we’re the national carrier of Niger and we’ll start flying there on the 14th of April with one aircraft. Shortly, we’ll introduce another aircraft. And what we want to do is that we want to join up all those West Coast routes. We’ll go to Freetown, Banjul, Conakry, Abidjan, we’re already flying to Accra, Doualla and Libreville. That’s our target this year. They’ll be flown on our B737-700 NGs.

Additional aircraft
At the end of the year, we take delivery of two new B737-800NG. It’s actually a longer version. It’s a bigger aircraft, it’s got more range and as we turn over to 2009, you’ll see us expanding all over Africa.
Routes we’ll fly as Niger’s national carrier
We’ll fly Niger to Cotonou, and also we’ll be linking the domestic cities of Maradi, Zinda and Agadez and ultimately, the aircraft will link into the northern part of Nigeria. Such areas will be Sokoto, Kano and later to Bamako and Ougadougu as well. All these are from the base in Niger. And as the national carrier of Niger, that gives us long haul rights as well. So, we’ll have traffic rights let’s say to New York, to Paris, and others.

Latest on slots into Heathrow
We’re meeting the British Government on the 26 of March this year. After that, we have a Bilateral Air Service Agreement meeting in London between the Nigerian and British government and we’re pushing very hard on the realization of some of those slots in Heathrow for Arik.

Leasing airplanes for Lagos-US routes
Yes! It’s true that we’re planning to lease airplanes for the Lagos-US routes if we finally get the nod but the stage we’re now is that we’re very close to completing an aircraft purchase. But I can’t give you that details because it’s not complete yet. In 2010, we’ll take delivery of our first B777-200LR. It’s really a long-range aircraft. In the mean time, we’ve got a wet leased aircraft to give us that lift until 2010.

Hitches at the General Aviation Terminal
The hitches we have at the General Aviation Terminal (GAT) has to do with more space. We really need more space there. Indeed, FAAN has been very helpful and supportive in creating more space. But the biggest problem is that most of the airlines that operate from there also operate from the new terminal, the MMA 2. So, they have split operations. If we have a check on that, that will be perfect.

Background
I’m from Scotland, but I was born in Edinburgh. I started my aviation career with a summer job in Edinburgh Airport. I was meant to be going to the university and I needed some money in the summer mainly for beer and drinking generally and so I got a temporary job in Edinburgh Airport. When I started working in the airport, I loved and enjoyed it. It was like opening a new window in my life and I stayed there. I worked on the ground, I worked on check-in, I went to dispatch and eventually, I went down to England to work for a very large company called Britannia Airways, which subsequently became the largest chartered airline in the world.

I climbed to the management ranks there and I ended up in charge of ground operations and assumed responsibility for bringing a quality plan there and revamping the whole structure and set up. I was then asked to do a similar job in cabin services. Now, cabin services in Britannia Airways is a very big department. We had 1,700 cabin crews. So, it was like a department within a department and what I did there was review the way the systems worked, how it was organized and of course we save money by being better organized. After that, I was asked to form a big joint venture project and that was starting a new airline in Germany, again for Britannia Airways. And the airline was called Britannia Germany.

So, I was part of the project team to set that up and I was asked to become the Managing Director of the airline once we started flying. So, I was part of the start up there and as soon as we began flying, I became the Managing Director. I was there for three and half years and I then left Britannia, did some Consulting, and then I was asked to form a second airline and this was Air Atlanta Europe based in London Gatwick Airport. Air Atlanta specialized in leasing aircraft and crews to airlines that needed them to beef up their capacity. My job there was to set up a team, get the Air Operators Certificate (AOC) and launch a new airline, which I did. I did that job for about two years and then I returned to consultancy. I was consulting with Ryan air. It’s Europe’s largest low cost airline. I was there for a year as a consultant and then another time off and later I was approached for this job, which entails coming to Nigeria to set up a new airline, Arik Air. I’ve been with the airline from start up to this stage and that’s close to a year now.

What attracted me to Nigeria
The attraction for me was the fact that it was the third time I’ve been involved in setting up a new airline. So, I came to Nigeria in mid March 2006. I’m about 11 months here and I’m still here.
Let me also say that I’ve heard the stories about Nigeria and if you listen to CNN or read web pages of BBC, it says don’t travel to Nigeria, but I insisted on coming to Nigeria using my own common sense. When I came here, I was shocked by the friendliness and warmth of the people. I could see it was going to be tough job because Arik Air was going to refurbish and revamp some of the assets of the former Nigeria Airways and so you could see a lot of work you needed to do in there.

When I spoke to the chairman and I understood his vision for what he wanted to do, not just for the airline, but to help rebuild the Nigerian aviation industry to be at the standard it should be at, that was another attraction to be part of the team. But also, the job I love doing, that is starting up a new airline, leading a team and then forming the team into a cohesive unit is a huge attraction.

Initial hurdles
My initial hurdles was forming a team of people who had aviation experience in Europe and who new the European rules and laws and then coming down to Nigeria with that team to work together as a cohesive unit and make things happen. Another hurdle was also getting ourselves organized down here because people here are used to airlines coming and going and as such people were perhaps not taking us that seriously in the early days. We also spent some time with the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), understanding how they wanted us to set up.