Louis Ibah
A thunderous applause from elated passengers greeted an Air Peace Boeing 777-300 aircraft as it touched down the runway of the Sharjah International Airport in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), on a humid Saturday morning of July 6, 2018.
It was the inaugural international flight operations by Air Peace Airline on the Lagos – Sharjah – Dubai route.
The aircraft had left Lagos at about 9.45pm on Friday July 5, and after flying for more than seven hours from the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, Capt Victor Egonu,(Captain-in-Command of the aircaft), successfully brought the giant bird down the soil of Sharjah, the beautiful cultural capital of the UAE. For the 316 passengers that made the inaugural flight, the spontaneous applause that saluted the smooth landing of the aircraft was not necessarily about the proficiency of Captain Egonu who had been introduced as Nigeria’s first pilot to man the Boeing 777 aircraft; it was more of a commendation for the sagacity of Air Peace management for re-launching direct air service between Nigeria and the UAE.
Without doubt, passenger and cargo traffic between Nigeria and the UAE cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi has grown quite significantly in the last 10 years as it would appear that more Nigerians now consider this fast-developing and beautiful gulf state a destination of choice for trade, commerce, education and tourism ahead of some developed European and American states.
According to travel agent, Agnes Emedeme, in recent years, the Lagos-Dubai route is competing keenly with the traditionally lucrative Lagos – London and Lagos – New York routes in terms of passenger traffic and revenues generated for airlines as well as travel and tour operators.
“Foreign airlines flying directly into Dubai or Abu Dhabi from Lagos, or those offering connecting flights into these cities are raking in huge incomes daily just as flights operating into London, Paris, Istanbul, and Frankfurt,” said Emedeme.
“On some days, the Lagos-Dubai and Lagos – Abu Dhabi routes become even more lucrative than European and American routes in terms of the tickets sold by travel agents for the gulf state airlines and other airlines like Ethiopian, Kenya, Rwanda airlines that offer seamless and affordable connecting flights to the UEA,” added Emedeme.
In her explanation,through careful planning that saw Emirates and Etihad creating airports hubs in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the UAE has been positioned as the gateway to some Asian cities like Malaysia, India, Singapore, Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, South Korea, India, Indonesia, and Philippines, where hundreds of Nigerians engage in various import and export businesses.
Sadly, the absence of a vibrant Nigerian carrier on that route has led to a humongous capital flight inimical to the Nigerian economy as the foreign airlines continue to repatriate than retain monies earned from ticket sales in the country.
The Air Peace model
The launch of the Air Peace flight from Lagos – Dubai via Sharjah airport no doubt comes as a great relief for hundreds of Nigerian passengers who yearn for direct flight services to Dubai on a local carrier. Air Peace however had brought along a package that allows passengers connect their international flights from Lagos to Dubai seamlessly from flights originating from other local airports. For instance, a passenger who buys a ticket for the Lagos – Sharjah – Dubai flight from Enugu, Owerri or Kano from Air Peace for about N190,000, enjoys the advantage of being flown ‘freely’ from Enugu, Owerri or Kano to Lagos to link up the Lagos – Sharjah – Dubai flight at the same ticket cost paid by a passenger whose flight originates directly from Lagos. What this means is that the cost of flying to and from Enugu, Owerri or Kano for a Dubai bound passenger is being knocked off by the airline.
Indeed, what the airline has done is to create a mini-hub out of Lagos through its network of flights on the domestic routes. And with over 25 aircraft acquired in barely four years of operations in Nigeria, Air Peace has spread it’s domestic operations to about 15 airports – enough to generate the required traffic (passenger and cargo) to feed it’s Boeing 777 aircraft on the Lagos – Dubai route.
Another model that the airline has deployed is sealing an interlining deal with Air Arabia (the Sharjah domiciled carrier) that allows passengers on the Air Peace ticket to transit to other destinations in Middle-East and Asia from the Sharjah airport. For instance, a travel agent can comfortably book a Nigerian passenger to fly on an Air Peace ticket from Lagos to Oman, Malaysia, Japan, among other cities, if the passenger agrees to transit from Sharjah and continue the next leg of the journey on Air Arabia. It is a model that was not adopted by the three previous Nigerian carriers, Virgin Nigeria, Arik Air, and Medview Airlines that failed in their bid to operate the Lagos-Dubai routes. The three airlines only flew a ‘one-stop’ flight to Dubai amid insufficient data that showed that 70 per cent of passengers on the Lagos – Dubai route were on transit, mostly to other destinations in Asia. And that was one of the reasons that saw them crash out of the route as more Nigerians on transit to other destinations found in the gulf carriers (Emirates and Etihad) better alternatives to the Nigerian airlines.
Areas to improve
Creating a hub out of the Lagos airport for a local airline certainly comes with its challenges as witnessed by some passengers on the inaugural flight. Anticipated layover times can fail to click for various reasons. For instance, passengers can be stuck for hours in traffic trying to transit between the Lagos domestic airport to international terminals. It therefore means the airline has to make provision for its transit passengers to be moved directly by buses through the ramp linking the domestic and international airport terminals, rather than the ever-busy airport road used by other motorists. And sufficient awareness also needs to be created by the airline for transit passengers to know that they must not step out of the airport terminal as the airline has made provision to transport them by buses through the ramp roads. Again inability to stick to set departure and arrival times appears to be one noticeable flaws of Nigerian airlines, and Air Peace is no exemption in this. For the airline to succeed in its hub model, it must be discipled enough to keep to its departure and arrival times. On the inaugural return flight from Sharjah, some passengers transiting to Owerri were heard openly complaining of the aircraft leaving Sharjah two hours behind schedule and arriving Nigeria at a time that there was no more flight for them to transit to Owerri.