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By Chidiebere Nwobodo
The end of 2020 is just weeks away. In Nigeria, one of the hallmarks of twilight of the year is the mass movement of people to various destinations to celebrate the Yuletide season. The people of Eastern Nigeria see this homecoming as annual ritual, the reason there is usually increased traffic of both vehicular and human traffic to the east during Christmas and New Year period.
At this time, families, friends and communities reunite for merriment, events, and also use the opportunity to discuss issues affecting families and communities vis-a-vis developments.
One of the major difficulties intending travelers worry about this season, is hectic means of transportation. Traffic is usually heavy both for air and road travellers. Besides, the Nigerian roads are not only in bad shape, but have also never been this unsafe, with prowling bandits and kidnappers making brisk business.
It was therefore a great relief when Air Peace, in line with it’s core mandate to ease aviation traffic and provide a better alternative to road transportation, announced increases in flight frequencies to Eastern Nigeria during this holiday. This, it said was to ameliorate difficulties experienced by travelers in keeping with their community-first philosophy.
Chief Allen Onyema, Chairman, founder of Airpeace Airlines, said: “By God’s grace, we shall be deploying several of our planes to the South East during this period to help our people perform their annual trip back home. We are not unaware of the importance of our people coming home this period.
“Most community projects and developments are addressed and implemented during this period, hence our resolve to flood the East with multiple flight frequencies. We can do it. We shall, as usual, deploy five flights from Lagos to Owerri from December 20 till the end of the year while Enugu shall, from the same period receive four flights daily from Lagos. Asaba shall receive three flights daily from Lagos. We shall deploy two flights daily out of Lagos to Calabar and Uyo respectively.
“Port Harcourt shall receive three flights from Lagos. We shall equally deploy three flights daily from Abuja – Owerri from the 21st of December till the end of the year. Same number of flights from Abuja to Enugu while two shall be deployed from Abuja to Asaba.
“We shall during the period deploy a bigger aircraft on the Calabar and Uyo routes respectively. We shall introduce Enugu-Kano-Enugu from the 22nd of December. Owerri-Kano-Owerri shall follow from the 23rd”.
This is indeed soothing to travellers, who are traumatised by the horrible experiences usually associated with mass movement of the people during festive seasons like this. Airports are usually jam-packed with passengers. Delay and outright cancelation of flights are usually the monstrous challenges aviation travelers encounter during this period. Some people who had booked flights, after protracted delays at the airports and subsequent cancelation of flights, end up using the road.
This makes them to miss on their earlier schedules. Many passengers get to their destinations depressed, deflated and worn out. Imagine the disappointments. The supposed elated mood of the season gets contaminated by the pains and agonising moments witnessed by hapless travelers whilst on transit—that should not be the case.
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As I earlier stated, with the grossly deteriorated interstate road networks and heightened insecurity in the country, which has manifested in the ghastly vehicular accidents, kidnapping, armed robbery, and even gruesome killings of travellers, a lot of Nigerians are too terrified to ply the roads now.
Some of the hitherto vehicular passengers, for their safety, are opting to fly instead of using the road. Imagine the pressure this unfortunate switch is already exerting on the aviation industry this period, especially as regards flights going eastern part of the country, who are the heaviest travellers at a time like this.
Remember, overwhelming traffic surge creates higher possibilities of flight delays and cancelations. The simple economic law of demand and supply comes into play, of which gets airfares skyrocketing beyond the reach of average Nigerians struggling to survive under a recessed economy. But the increased number of flights and schedule will help to keep the fares a bit down.
Chairman/CEO of Air Peace, Chief Allen Onyema in his wisdom, which resonates with the noble vision of the Airline to give Peace to passengers and create value for their monies, decided to provide solutions to plethora of problems associated with limited flights to the east during festive seasons vis-a-vis how increasingly unsecured our roads are becoming. In the light of this, the Airline has received some of its aircraft back from overhauled maintenance abroad—not only to expand its fleet and guarantee multiple flights schedules, but to ensure safety of passengers onboard because safety is paramount.
It is not surprising to people like us that Air Peace is trail-blazing Nigeria’s aviation industry when the sector is profusely hemorrhaging as a result of economic crisis ignited by Covid-19 pandemic and its effects. When some airlines are limping, Air Peace is soaring. The Airline’s ability to increased flight frequencies to Eastern Nigeria to ease traffic and make life comfortable for passengers, especially now most of the operators are under economic pressures, is a testament of purposeful leadership driven by passion and selflessness, which is embodied in Chief Allen Onyema.
The management of Air Peace, as the leading ingenious airline in West Africa, has redefined business philosophy from exploitative to ameliorative—placing the yearnings of service consumers side-by-side the quest for profits. It is true that cost of flight tickets increased recently due to fluctuations in exchange rate, multiple taxation of airlines and general hostile business environment, juxtaposed with recession being faced by the economy.
While other countries of the world are bailing out their airlines from the grip of economic crisis fuelled by Covid-19, airline operators in the country are being heavily taxed, which is reflecting in the high cost of flight tickets. While other climes treat airplanes like human beings for obvious reasons, Nigerian airliners pass through the valley of shadow of death in the hands of Customs and all manner of agencies to import spare parts even against standing government policies.
But situation in the aviation industry would have been worse if Air Peace were not there to play a stabilising role, as seen in some of the Airline’s recent interventions.
For emphasis, flooding eastern corridors with multiple flights this festive season will help to provide alternatives and curb the greed of some exploitative tendencies in the industry, who may want to take undue advantage of increasingly insecurity and traffic on the road to milk passengers that will consider flying as alternative. Just imagine the trauma of insecurity, for someone to travel on the road from Kano to Enugu? or Kano to Owerri? This is one of the considerations Air Peace must have had in mind when it rolled out these multiple flights and destinations, of which two of the routes are Kano-Enugu-Kano and Kano-Owerri-Kano.
This is commendable and other airlines need to follow suit.
•Nwobodo writes from Abuja
