By Chinelo Obogo
The Chief Executive Officer of United Nigeria Airlines, Prof. Obiora Okonkwo, has revealed that the carrier’s upcoming Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility will be a game-changer for both the Nigerian aviation industry and the African market, promising to impact the sector’s growth and operational efficiency.
He said the initial plan was to establish the facility in Enugu State, its operational base but said the matter was still being fine-tuned.
During a recent signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Lagos with Cronos Aviation, an international charter airline based in Montreal, to establish an MRO in Nigeria, Obiora said the Enugu state government has expressed strong interest in hosting the facility.
He, however, noted that various options were on the table and that a final decision would be made in due course.
Regarding the viability of an MRO, he explained that both Nigeria and the wider West African region currently lack the capacity for comprehensive base maintenance services. As a result, they can only offer limited line maintenance for certain aircraft types, with even private jets having to be flown abroad for essential services, incurring substantial costs.
He explained that, due to the lack of such a facility in West Africa, Nigerian airlines, along with those from neighboring countries, are compelled to seek aircraft maintenance services in South Africa or North Africa.
He speaks more on the planned facility and other matters.
Partnership with Cronos to build an MRO
Cronos’s International has an existing MRO in South Africa at the Oliver Tambo Airport. They have been operating for more than 13 years with the certification to do Embraer and 737. So, we are signing an MRO in partnership to set up such services here in Nigeria. As you may know, we do not have in Nigeria an MRO or service capability to do base services. We can only do line services in some of our fleets that some of the operators carry out. Even as little as the private jets, they have to fly across countries to be serviced and this is costing us a lot of resources.
This is a multi-million dollar project and by setting up an MRO, we would only not be saving the cost of operations for United Nigeria, we would as well be offering services to other operators who might require them.
They will transfer the technology and help us to train our people and that will help the nation to save our scare foreign exchange for the nation and open up a new door for other aspects of strong participation in aviation. We think that with the MRO here located in Nigeria, we will develop the capacity to be able to attend to technical issues very quickly.
We should not only be talking about how much in the investment, but also how much we will be saving the nation down the line because for a normal C-check for the least aircraft outside Nigeria, we should be talking about minimum of half a million US dollars and you know that some of these checks are done either on cycles or calendar. But here in Nigeria, we operate high cycles due to the short distance that we fly.
If you look around Nigeria now, you have more aircraft on ground than those that are flying and if we have easily accessible and available maintenance centers, it will make the turnaround of maintenance very good, help to train manpower and give more opportunities to our people.
Location
You remember that our operational base is in Enugu and it would have been our desire to site the MRO there. As of today, there is a very serious intention from the government of Enugu for us to site it there. But sometimes, it’s also important to back intentions with actions. Right now, we have alternatives and options which we are reviewing and then we pick it up in the very shortest time. We have some very viable options but where we would put the MRO will remain a commercial secret for now.
We are not only going to do maintenance to Nigerian operators, we would provide maintenance as well to other operators in the region that also have the same issue who have to fly six hours to do maintenance. It will be easier for them to fly two hours, than to fly six or seven hours.
Market for the MRO
There is a big gap not only in Nigeria but in the region and for this MRO, our target will be not only to be certified by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) but also to have foreign approval certification, FAA certification.
In terms of the market, it is easy to estimate because there is no MRO here in Nigeria for base maintenance. So, if you take the number of aircraft that are flying, they must have to go outside the region as there is none in West Africa. You would have to go to South Africa or North Africa, that is the closest we have here. So, I think that the market is there.
The number one priority of aviation is actually safety, more than anything else.
When safety comes in between any other issue, every other consideration takes a back seat. I will tell you one time, last year, we had a need on our A320 to raise the base, to do some line maintenance on the flap that was not coming up when the aircraft wants to land.
We needed to lift it up but there was no jack in the country to be able to do that, so, the aircraft had to be on ground until we had to arrange a jack from overseas to be able to do the job and that took a couple of days. But this is something that could have been done in one hour.