Lagos — Nigeria's flag carrier, Arik Air, would begin its New York and Houston's direct flight from Lagos during summer of 2009.

This comes as the airline has concluded plans to start operations on Lagos-London route during the middle of next month, after taking delivery of the first of its three Airbus A340-500 aircraft from Toulouse, France, next week.

Arik Managing Director, Mr. Mike McTighe, told newsmen at a briefing in Lagos yesterday that slots for both destinations were already available from the U.S. government.

"We are also planning to commence operations to the USA, specifically New York and Houston non-stop direct service from Lagos in early summer 2009," McTighe said.

He said Arik might not be able to operate into the two U.S. destinations using its own aircraft, as the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) is yet to be granted category one certification by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

According to him, the airline will use wet-lease European aircraft to service the two U.S. routes, pending the certification of the NCAA by the U.S. government.

He said: " The NCAA is working assiduously to get FAA Category One certification. But we have got traffic rights for wet-lease operation as Nigeria is not Category One certified. We will wet-lease a European aircraft for the operation."

Asked why Arik added New York destination against the Houston the federal government designated it to fly into, McTighe said the emergence of U.S. Delta Airlines informed the development, as the American flies the direct Lagos-Houston route at the moment.

He explained that it would not make economic sense for Arik to start operations in to Houston, even though a sizable population of Nigerians live there.

"We found out also that a large population of Nigerians live in New York, same as in London, and at the moment, there is no direct flight to New York from Lagos," said McTighe, who disclosed that the airline's first set of 14 cadet pilots trained at the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT) would be graduating next week to coincide with the delivery of its A340-500 plane to be deployed for the London operation.

McTighe said Arik would serve both Nigerian and continental menu on its London flight, adding that passengers would also have the opportunity of monitoring live CNN news and Super Sports programme on DSTV during flight.

He said the new wide-bodied aircraft from Airbus would be delivered to Abuja December 4 where it would be received by top federal government officials.