By May Nwoka
With the entry of Air Peace, a local carrier, into the coveted Lagos/London route, hitherto dominated by the foreign airlines, travellers appear to be in focus and in for a better treatment.
Air Peace has come into the market slashing the air fare for travellers and causing jitters among the foreign airlines that have once held sway on the London route and had travellers at their mercy.
In an interview on Channels Television on Tuesday, the former President of the National Association of Nigeria Travel Agencies (NANTA), Bankole Bernard, said the price of international flight ticket on the Lagos-London route was as high as N3.5m but with Air Peace pegging a return economy class ticket for N1.2m, foreign airlines such as British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, and Qatar Airways have been forced to slash their prices to stay competitive.
He said foreign airlines operating into the four major airports in Nigeria are making more than enough profit, unchallenged. The four major gateways are Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kano. “If they’ve been able to do, there is no need coming out to complain about (forex) backlog. May be we set up an audit committee to look at how they arrived at these backlogs,” he said.
“How come all of a sudden airfares have gone down? What could be responsible for that? Number one: there is a new entrant to a major route (Lagos-London),” Bernard said.
“There are two major destinations that Nigerians ply. Number one is Dubai and Dubai has been out of it for a while now. So, we (Nigerians) have resorted to the London route. The UK route is where a lot (of foreign carriers) use to earmark their airfares.
“Now that Air Peace has come into that space with a direct flight that will not cause any layover in any other country, the price has dropped. Why? What happened? Is there a magic around that? We should be able to question what made the prices drop.
“The prices will drop as long as we have another form of supply that is different from the conventional ones. The supply that we now have — that is Air Peace, that is a direct flight — will definitely put pressure on every other route. So, all the other airlines are forced to quickly make an adjustment or they will be out of the market in no time.”
Last Saturday, Air Peace, had its inaugural flight to London with the Minister of Aviation, Festus Keyamo; and his counterpart at the Trade and Investment Ministry, Doris Uzoka-Anita onboard the Lagos-London flight alongside businessmen and women.
Many have lauded this move by Air Peace adding that more local airlines should be encouraged to commence international flights to profitable routes.
Since the exit of the Nigeria Airways, many of these lucrative international routes have been taken over by foreign airlines who are reportedly reaping off Nigerians and are making huge profits in the country.
“It will be a welcome development to see many other local airlines follow suit”, a Nigerian student in London, Nduka Obasi quipped.