Proposed National Carrier yet to meet requirements-Capt.Mshelia
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| Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Westlink aviation,Captain Ibrahim Mshelia has picked holes in the Nigeria National Carrier that is bill to take off in April,2022. According to him: *Federal Executive Council(FEC) has not approved Maintenance,Repair Overhaul(MRO) *Airline not yet registered *No one knows the stakeholders *No transparency in the process *Yet to register with Corporate Affairs Commission(CAC) *Who are the Directors, have they been cleared by the State Security? GET MORE DETAILS BELOW Number one: airline to create 70,000 jobs when it starts, even before the COVID-19 hit BA had 42, 000 staff all over the world, Lufthansa staff streghnth over 100,000or these are large airlines i am talking about. KLM with 100/102 years of existence, they have just about 100,000 employees and then if you come down to our level of Kenyan Airways which has just less than 5000, Etihad, state airline for the middle east has less than 13, 000-14,000. How on earth will an airline that is a dream away, or a mirage i would say will come and employ 70,000 people. I just listened on Arise that he has acquired 12,000 hectares, 12,000 hectares is about 20% the whole Abuja, he has acquired that to build a second runway, MRO and the MRO is coming before the airline and the MRO he said the pieces are together but he has not gone to FEC for approval yet and it is coming before the airline and it is supposed to service the airline. i personally would like to talk to few of my colleagues , how do you want to start an airline that has not been registered/ I stand to be corrected if that airline is registered at all. If it is not registered, first and foremost, we don’t even know who the shareholders will be, we only know that Nigeria will have no more than 5% he has not told Nigerians or sector operators who these shareholders will be. Which means he is doing it in absolute secrecy which means he is not setting up an airline for Nigeria, he is setting up an airline for himself and he has no right to do that using Nigeria’s money or leveraging on Nigerian government. There has to be transparency in the whole exercise. He must be called to order. It would take you a minimum of 12 months to register an airline when you know the name even with government leverage because there are incubation periods for some of these certification processes. You need to register and when the CAC gives you registration certificate, you need to apply for Air Transport License (ATL) if they will be doing scheduled operations. We all know that every director has to fill a form because the ICAO recommended practice is all those who operate an airline must have reputable track records. So we don’t have criminals, doing gunrunning,laundering and what have you, every director on paper must be vetted by the SSS and security agencies. You fill a Personal History Statement (PHS) form and submit it and it would be sent to SSS who will go to everywhere you put on that CV to verify. After the vetting you will make an advert for 28 days to last so anyone who has an issue with the licensing of the ATL to that applicant should come up with reasons, there could be court cases going on for months or years, that should further tell you something That has not been done before you get ATL so you can apply for AOC, no one needs to tell you journalists how long it takes to get AOC in Nigeria, they are not going to jump the process because it is a Nigerian project, we will not allow that plus we are a category one CAA, they should not dare do that otherwise they will lose that status. He unveiled a name in Farnborough,nobody goes to unveil a name, you are setting up an airline for Nigerians you hid the name from them and went to Farnborugh where nobody is but those you selected to go there to unveil a name. People go to airshows to showcase their products you just saw how Overland, Ibom Air were at Dubai Airshow and made orders. There you will meet financiers, who will finance aircraft for you and go with the manufacturers and if you have good track records you can slip into it like our airlines have been lucky to get financing and signed up to get new aircraft ,that’s what happens at fanborough,nobody goes there to unveil the name of an airline. This man did it… |
