Experts in the aviation industry have lamented the failures of the airlines within West Africa saying that the reasons why most Africa Airlines fail to deliver were due to lack of business plan, high taxes, corporate governance issue as well as no support from the states.
The experts, who called attention to promoting and supporting local carriers before competing, said that most airlines focus was to compete with legacy carriers without checkmating some factors that could hinder their growth in the future.
At the panel discussion held in Ghana, during the 4th Accra Weizo, on “Harnessing the Opportunities in Aviation Value-chain in West Africa and Why Airlines Fail,” managing director of Aero, Captain Ado Sanusi, stated that, there has been a study to look at what is happening to the airlines that have went under, including Nigeria Airways, Ghana Airways and all the other west Africa airlines. He attributed the failure to lack of sustainable business plan, saying that “what we have done in west Africa is to try and copy and paste what we have seen on Europe, America and to bring it to west Africa without first looking at the local content and environment that we operate in.” He therefore advised that it was necessary for airline to fully mature before setting out for competition.
Ado explained that there were a lot of factors that had contributed to failure of airlines in the aviation sector in West Africa and one of the major factor was the lack of protection from the state. To him, “The state must protect the airlines for them to grow into maturity before they allow them to go and compete with the legacy carriers so if you look at the submission of America they are been protected by its own state.”
By HANNAH ONI
Source: leadership.ng
