Air journey in Nigeria is beset by delays attributable to many elements, which embody climate, breakdown of plane, poor airport amenities and poor scheduling.
Poor scheduling is drawback of airways, which might be averted with environment friendly schedule association and upkeep.
In Nigeria there’s additionally poor plane utilisation as a result of the system and infrastructure assure restricted time frame in a day to fly. Airways can fly until midnight from Abuja to Lagos, however they can’t fly to many different airports as a result of both these airports should not have airfield lighting or there’s insecurity.
So even whether it is doable, airways can not schedule flights late to Port Harcourt, Owerri, Kaduna and even Benin as a result of safety considerations.
But when an airline correctly schedules its rotations within the day, it might reduce delays and flight cancelations.
THISDAY spoke to the previous Managing Director of the Nigerian Airspace Administration Company (NAMA), Captain Fola Akinkuotu, who stated schedule and upkeep have been very essential to an airline and determines its operation success, income earnings and utilisation of plane.
As a way to mitigate flight delays and cancellation, airways can maintain plane on standby in case if anybody in operation endure chicken strike, engine failure and even undercarriage drawback. As soon as any of the plane within the fleet is grounded for any motive, the one on standby can be deployed.
However Akinkuotu famous that it won’t be virtually sensible to maintain plane on standby whereas it generates bills, as a substitute of working and incomes income with it. He recommended that whereas an airline might maximiseeach plane in its fleet, it might cut back routing of one of many plane in order that it could possibly be on standby, however it’s a waste of assets to maintain airworthy plane on floor from morning until night time.
“What it’s a must to take a look at is that this. Liken this case to proudly owning automobiles. When you’ve got 10 automobiles you pay insurance coverage, automobile licence, roadworthiness and others. These are normal bills. If you happen to purchased that automobile on increased buy you’ll nonetheless be paying for it whether or not it’s parked or not.
“In airline, you will have 10 plane and you retain one on floor, you proceed to pay for its insurance coverage. If you happen to leased the plane you’ll nonetheless be paying for the lease. You pay for all these whereas the plane is on floor. So you aren’t utilizing the plane maximally.
“In scheduling it’s possible you’ll cut back the rotation of one of many plane. For instance, when you’ve got 10 Boeing and each operates eight rotation, you could have one that may do 4 rotations; in order that when you will have disruptions, you’ll be able to deploy it to interchange the one which has damaged down,” he stated.
Akinkuotu stated it doesn’t make sense to maintain one plane as spare as a result of the airline can be dropping income. However an airline can maintain engine as spare if it may well afford it; so if there’s incident like chicken strike, the airline can change the engine, relying on the harm.
“It doesn’t make financial sense to relaxation an plane, however you’ll be able to reduce its utilisation,” he stated.
He stated that flight scheduling contributes to delays and cancellation; that’s the reason scheduling is a vital job, remarking that good schedule plan should envisage doable disruptions and plan the schedule accordingly.
Akinkuotu stated that having extra plane advantages an airline as a result of it maximizes its personnel and an airline should have extra plane for strong worthwhile operation, suggesting that to maximise financial system of scale, an airline should have about 13 plane.
The previous Director Normal of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) additionally stated that if a schedule plan have been performed very nicely it might pre-empt a state of affairs the place plane within the fleet is taken out for upkeep so it might plan to cowl the absence of that plane.
“For instance, when you’ve got 4 plane and one is taken out for upkeep, there are two choices; both you reschedule your flights otherwise you lease an plane on brief time period to cowl that slot. Ibom Air did one thing like that not too long ago when its plane went for upkeep; it leased plane to cowl the operations of that plane. However what’s vital right here is understanding that the plane goes for upkeep and rescheduling your operations.
“So you intend for the upkeep. Your engineers have the slot card, you safe slot together with your upkeep firm and ferry your plane there. If you do not have environment friendly schedule plan, you can be in bother. Schedule and upkeep is a vital division Nigeria Airways Restricted,” Akinkuotu instructed THISDAY.
Many business observers say that many Nigerian airways should not have environment friendly schedulers and subsequently inefficient schedule plan and that has contributed to a number of the delays encountered of their operations.
They famous that it’s by correct scheduling that Nigerian airways can effectively service the daylight airports, which in lots of events have compelled airways to cancel flights after they realised they can’t function to those airports after 6:00 pm.
Additionally they noticed that flights are tightly caught collectively as a result of airways in Nigeria usually function 6:00 a to six:00 pm. After that interval it’s only Abuja-Lagos, Kano-Lagos; Abuja-Kano that may proceed to function, as THISDAY noticed on Monday that flight operations continues into the night time in Abuja until after 11:00 pm, however nearly all of the flights have been destined to Lagos and Kano.