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Louis Ibah
The lack of sufficient parking space for wide-bodied aircraft at the apron of Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) Lagos is creating a rift between local airlines and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN).
The MMIA international terminal was modelled after Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Holland and was to designed to serve as a hub for West African barely travellers.
At its inauguration on March 15, 1979, it was expected that successive governments would invest in the expansion of the initial one terminal to about five with similar expansions in aprons to accommodate the expected aircraft and huge passenger traffic.
And true to projection, the MMIA at present handles over 10million annual passenger traffic with over 32 international airlines flying into the airport and about 272 international aircraft movement daily for both arrival and departure.
The Air Peace incident
Daily Sun learnt that the recent arrival of four Boeing 777 aircraft (three belonging to Air Peace and one for Medview Airline) all parked at the apron of the Lagos international airport has thrown up a crisis of insufficient parking space for other international airlines that utilise the airport.
It is a crisis that however calls to question the readiness of the country’s prime airport to play the role of a hub, especially for local airlines like Air Peace and Medview who are showing the capacity to challenge other international airlines with the acquisition of the wide-bodied Boeing 777- ircraft pending when it would be deployed for operations.
It was one decision that didn’t go down well with the management of Air Peace considering that it gave sufficient time to FAAN to create space for the aircraft. When the aircraft was eventually cleared to land after several pleas from some concerned Nigerians, it was allocated a parking space at the cargo terminal of the MMIA.
Chairman/CEO of Air Peace, Mr. Allen Onyema who while expressing his shock and dismay at the decision of FAAN to turn back the aircraft to the USA where it originated also queried the preparedness of Nigeria to unlock it’s aviation sector potential for job creation and national growth. Said Onyema, “they are the ones who are complaining that Nigerian airlines lack the capacity to buy the right aircraft to compete internationally. And now we have brought in the Boeing 777s and they are telling us that they don’t have parking space. How then are we going to make progress?”
Although Air Peace was later granted a space at the MMIA apron to park it’s latest B777, the incident nonetheless brought to the fore the need for urgent government intervention given plans by other local airlines to bring in more wide-bodied aircraft in the years ahead for their international operations.
An expanded MMIA apron
According to the South West Regional Airport Manager of FAAN, Mrs. Shin Aba, in recent years, the MMIA had been grappling with the challenge of apron space to accommodate wide-bodied international passenger and cargo aircraft.
Said Aba, “At our cargo apron, the capacity is meant to take four aircraft at least two wide-bodied aircraft and two smaller aircraft at the same time. Once in a while we have more than that capacity, once this place is filled up, we take the cargo flights to the international airport and that is additional cost to the cargo airline as they need to deploy and truck their goods from international to cargo.”
The first option FAAN has, is to invest in the expansion of the MMIA apron to hold more aircraft. A recent tour of the MMIA reveals that only about one third of the land allotted for the airport at its inception had been used. This leaves a lot of acres of land empty. FAAN should therefore commit additional funds into the development of the dormant MMIA lands like in the construction of new aprons for cargo and international flights.
Expand aprons at other airports
The majority of Nigerian airlines are registered to operate from the MMIA as their hub. It is a deal that allows the airlines the freedom to park unused commercial aircraft at zero or discounted cost. This is so given that airlines globally are exempted from parking space levies at the city airport aprons where they have also been registered as their operational headquarters. However, any successful effort to decongest the Lagos airport apron and create parking space for more wide-bodied aircraft would certainly involve relocating some of the aircraft to airports outside Lagos. And this requires FAAN also investing in the construction of larger aprons at the Port Harcourt, Enugu, Kano and Abuja airport as part of its long term plan.
In the short term, FAAN should woo airlines who have aircraft parked at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) Apron, especially Air Peace and Medview Airlines whose aircraft are not being put to immediate use with some incentives or waivers so that they can relocate their aircraft to any airport of their choice with less traffic to create space for operating airlines.
Such waivers should include exemptions from all forms of payment for the parked aircraft at the less traffic airports.
Security
Aircraft costs a lot of money with some of the wide-bodied aircraft sold for more than N1.2billion. For airline owners therefore, the safety and security of their aircraft at whatever location they are parked comes as top priority. Sadly, the absence of perimeter fences at most Nigerian airports makes them unsafe for local airlines to park their aircraft overnight for fear of buglers and unauthorised persons who may compromise the safety of the aircraft. It therefore behoves on FAAN to boost security at all Nigerian airports if it hopes to gain the confidence of airline owners to park their wide-bodied aircraft outside the Lagos airport.
