The Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has said the eight domestic carriers are undergoing a financial and economic audit to establish their strength.
Its Director-General, Capt MUSA Nuhu stated this yesterday at a briefing on the state of the industry.
He said the audit had become necessary to establish the health of airlines in an industry where passenger confidence is coming under scrutiny.
Declaring that the audit would be carried out in phases, Nuhu said preliminary report from the exercise suggests that the carriers are not having safety challenges but only grappling with cost related challenges which include difficulty in accessing foreign exchange at the official window and the increasing of cost of aviation fuel, which has made it difficult for them to cover cost of operations.
The NCAA boss said the authority is saddled with the responsibility of ensuring the current economic and financial crisis do not graduate to safety issues.
“The NCAA has grounded a considerable number of aircraft. Though airlines may be undergoing these challenges, the regulator would not compromise on safety.”
He, however, declined comment on Dana, saying that details of NCAA’s investigation into the carrier would be made public when investigation is completed.
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He also said not much was discovered on the technical, economic and financial probe into Aero’s operations, affirming that the carrier opted to temporarily suspend operations to enable it carry out restructuring.
On the request by the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), the umbrella body of indigenous carriers, for the abolition of the five per cent Tickets Sales Charge (TSC), Nuhu said the regulator doesn’t not have the powers to grant such waivers as the TSC is a law signed by the president from the Civil Aviation Act passed by the National Assembly.
“We will look at how we can be flexible in attending to some of their requests without compromising safety,” the DG added.
He also assured us that discussions are ongoing to resolve the issues the aviation industry is facing lately.
Source: The Nation
