Yemie Adeoye
19 July 2008
interview
Lagos — ALEX Van Elk is the Managing Director and chief Executive Officer of Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited, the owners of the Murtala Muhammed Airport2 (MMA2) in Lagos. In this interview with Saturday Vanguard he spoke on issues affecting the aviation sector . He also spoke on the efforts of his company to offer world-class service to Nigerians, in all airports across the country. Enjoy it:
As a stakeholder in the aviation sector, how do you assess the sector so far taking into cognisance the recent efforts at restructuring which is still on-going at the moment?
Speaking from the past years that I've been in Nigeria and from the time before that which I've read in the papers there's been quite a lot of changes in the country. If you look at the aviation sector, first the airline part the safety issue is something which is being addressed by the former government and also being addressed by the present government and in that respect I think bodies like the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) is doing a very good job and we all know that they have invited IATA to do audit as well as ICAO we are now working on the safety audit of the airport.|
These are all things that are an incentive for all the airport operators to do the very best possible to make the aviation sector more safe in Nigeria.
Now if you look at the airlines themselves they have improved safety a great deal because they have to be looking at high rate companies like Lufthansa techniques for maintenance, looking at standards in engineers they hire, I think that's something already done very well.
The other part is the airport.
We can see that the government has set a very good approach when it comes to air navigation. It is something that we have to improve on and is improving and there is funding for that as well.
A lot has been going in terms of improving navigation equipment , same goes for the infrastructures of the airports themselves, looking at runways, taxiways and terminals, they are really working to get things better.
Of course, our airports as the first privileged private partnership is I can say, slightly above the rest available here in Nigeria, and many African countries, and that clearly shows that to improve aviation, you don't have to fund it alone as a government, because in my own opinion, the government can spend the resources they have much better on road infrastructure, on housing, on education, etc. Those are the things that are done by government.
If you look at airports, there are many airports operators and many airport companies who are operating airports throughout the world. So you see what we've been doing here. We are working with our team because it is a commercial operation to keep it up to the standards we want to have and that which would benefit the aviation sector. So we are keen as Bi-Courtney aviation to develop more air terminals or operate more airports in Nigeria and outside the country.
As it is now, do you think it is possible to have the likes of MMA2 project scattered around the country? And would it be possible to turn other airports around to look like MMA2?
Well, if you look at it from the architectural point of view, they don't have to be the same. One thing of being a wise master of your house is "don't build too big". So what you should do when operating an airport is to first make a master plan. See what the traffic flow is. What is the traffic flow? How many passengers do you have now?
How many passengers do you expect in the coming years? Don't just look at IATA figures, but look at specifically, the Nigerian situation, whether there is a relatively low infrastructure, whether there is still safety issue that drags people into planes? So aviation sector here grooms more than any other countries, so you have to go more than the IATA figures. Now, if you plan the airports, you look at what it is now and what you should expect.
We have the terminal here with the capacity of between four and half million passengers -a figure too small in airport like Warri or Port Harcourt. You don't need to make a huge terminal there. You make a terminal that has the quality standards. A quality standard doesn't mean it should be big.
It means that the facilities there is well maintained and has right management to operate it in the proper way. And an airport can be so commercial to earn money, so that is what I thought about it. The building should not be duplicated, but its concept should be duplicated.
That's a different thing. The building is nice, but I have seen other buildings that are nice but of a completely different shape. So the biggest mistake we can make is to say that we did this here in this airport and did the same thing somewhere else, we cannot do that.
You have to look at it from project to project and look at the needs. The shapes can be different, but the mistake to make is to build it too big, because it is an investment, talking about public private partnership. Nobody wants to spend money without a return on investment. So you have to look at the situations.
What is your stake on the relocation of all airlines from the international terminal of Murtala Muhammed Airport to the local wing to which some notable airlines have objected?
Essentially, we don't have issues with Virgin Nigeria.
The issue with Virgin Nigeria started when the airline said that our airport was not safe. But the main issue is that we have 36 years concession agreement with the government stating that all airlines should operate from this terminal. So our issue is with effect that the government is not living up to what they should do. So they should direct Virgin and Arik to move into the terminal which they have not been doing. They did it and Virgin stayed out. There was court injunction, which was for security reasons, there was a strict order that they move out.
Now, that can make you wonder why a court injunction can go over the national security issue. This is something we don't understand. If you go to Arik, on that part, Arik obeyed and left but they moved to the old terminal, GAT to operate from there.
Yes, they left the international airport, but they are still in the wrong terminal. Their planes can be there, that's no problem because we had an agreement with the government that they can use the GAT which is still good. What we are saying is that Arik could have their aircraft there but process their passengers into this first class facilities.
We have 30% of our capacity being used here.
That is the major problem because we have our tenants, we have the restaurants, we have the handling agents, and everybody is here based on the assumption in line with the contract that all the airlines would be here.
So our tenants are complaining, where is the traffic, where is our customers? I have to pay a rent here for the building, for an office, for shop, and I don't get the passengers that I expect. So that's the problem of the government not living up to their contractual duties. They should. So it goes beyond airlines just moving. They are realy damaging the business here in this airport.
What tangible reason have they given for not moving down to MMA2?
To start with Virgin Nigeria, said they have a MoU with the government that they are allowed to operate from the international terminal. We have seen this MoU and the content is questionable.
I don't want to go into it because it's in court now, but the content is questionable. Virgin also said that they cannot move because they want to create a hub.
That is giving the public the wrong information. Creating a hub has nothing to do with the terminal; it has to do with the airport that has hubs with separate terminals with transfer within the terminals.
One thing I can tell you is that since last Monday we have an air site transfer between the international terminal and our terminal which has been arranged now, paid by us. So you can see what we are doing to get the airlines move to our airport and to let us use the GAT.
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