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From Fred Itua, Abuja
The Senate Committee on Aviation, yesterday, had an emergency interface with airline operators, over an imminent downing of tools on Friday, as a result of high cost of Aviation fuel (Jet – A1).
The airline operators had on Monday at an interface with members of the Aviation Committee in the House of Representatives, threatened to stop operations within 72 hours if the cost of Aviation fuel was not urgently brought down to N400 per litre as against N670 it is, or financial bailout made by the Federal Government to them.
Twenty four hours the threat, at another interface with the chairman, Senate Committee on Aviation, Smart Adeyemi, the operators led by their chairman, Abdulmunaf Yunusa Sarina, repeated the threat by declaring that if nothing was done to save the stressful situation, airline operators were going to withdraw their services by Friday morning.
Sarina who spoke along with the chairman, United Nigeria Airline, Dr. Obiora Okonkwo, said they cannot cope with the high cost of operation worsened by upsurge in the price of aviation fuel.
According to him, “based on the cost component of Airline operation in Nigeria today , actual price for ticket of one hour flight is N150,000 which is being subsidised to N50,000 per passenger. We are overburdened by this ticket subsidy and heavily indebted to Banks with consequences of running out of business if required actions are not taken.”
Worried by the threat Adeyemi appealed to the airline operators to give the Senate and by extension, the National Assembly a few days to wade into the matter, through an interface with the Federal Government.
He said the issue will be raised on the floor of the Senate during plenary today for the purposes of making the Federal Government to give the operators, expected bail out.
