The United Nigeria Airline(UNA) has flown over 260,000 passengers, comfortably on 40 daily flights to different destinations in Nigeria which represents 75 percent of the total capacity in the last one year.

This was reveal in Lagos by Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of the Airline,Dr.Obiora Okonkwo while addressing members of the League of Airport and Aviation Correspondents(LAAC) as part of activities to mark one year anniversary of United Nigeria Airline.

According to him, “We took off in February reaching Lagos, Abuja, Enugu and Asaba after demo flights in January 2021.  In April we opened up the Owerri and Port Harcourt wings and in May, we responded to demand by creating additional flights to Lagos and Abuja. We hit Yenagoa in July becoming the only airline operating into Bayelsa International Airport.”

 He said the Airline further responded to high demand on the Owerri, Asaba and Enugu routes by creating additional flights to those airports in November and in December, “we started flying into the newly built Anambra Cargo Airport at Umueri.Through this, we have created over 500 direct jobs and more than a thousand indirect jobs.”

“ We are now in the process of expanding our domestic operations to reach, in the next few weeks, Benin, Kano, Jigawa and Yola. These are part of our immediate expansion programme as we work to ensure that none of our aircraft remains on ground. They belong to the skies and that is where they must be.”

The vision of the Airline,he said is to satisfactorily serve the public and become noted for on-time departure,adding” In fact, that should be our signature. We know that there are constrains, natural, technical and human that affect on-time departure. While we cannot take adequate control of the natural factors, we shall do our best to keep the technical and human reasons under check.”

  Chief Obiora Okonkwo said that because of his unflinching faith in the unity and potential greatness of this country that  he named the airline United Nigeria with the slogan flying to unite.

“Those are not empty phrases. They are rather but borne out of conviction. It is a sentiment I am convinced most Nigerians, including most of you here, share. Therefore, until we are able to find ourselves in all the commercial airports in Nigeria, we will not stop. Soon, we shall be facing northeast and northwest. We are already in an agreement and have understanding to start a shuttle service within the entire six states in the Northeast.So, in a nutshell, it has been an exciting 12 months of learning and improving. We have learnt a lot from our operations and are poised to do even better with our growth plan.”

 “ We plan that within the next 12 months, we see ourselves doubling the number of our fleets with larger passenger capacity aircraft. This is because it was our strategic plan to start with smaller body aircraft with 50 passenger capacity to develop and strengthen our operations. Having achieved that, we are now ready to introduce bigger body aircrafts as add-ons. Hopefully, we will add two aircrafts every quarter till the end of the year. That will give us the opportunity to expand our operations even beyond our borders.”

He further indicated that with the expansion of the fleets of the Airline comes the extension of its operations into the West Coast region and then, obviously, continental.

“ This also comes with the strengthening of our staff strength and our capacity in the area of human power. These are the things we are going to do because we need strong human resource to be able to deliver decent services within this expansion projections.”

“Within this growth plan, we also look forward to establishing an MRO in Enugu. We are already in talks with the regulatory authorities and the Enugu state government on this. In fact, the state governor, Rt. Hon. IfeanyiUgwuanyi, has welcomed us with a great enthusiasm and is also working hard to ensure that our plans of establishing the first MRO in the southeast comes to fruition. We can’t wait to see that project off the table.”

“The choice of Enugu for our MRO is strategic. Enugu is the heart of the southeast region and that is also the home of United Nigeria Airlines. In fact, in the next few weeks, many of our operations staff, who ought to work from the headquarters, will commence relocation to Enugu. That also solidifies our presence in the state and pushes us closer to achieving our target of setting up an MRO.”

“ We are in talks with critical partners for the construction and operationalization of the project. I am also excited about the project because of the jobs that would be created though it and the specialization it would engender. So, all of us at United Nigeria Airlines are eagerly looking forward to the foundation laying ceremony for the construction of our MRO in Enugu. I guess you all will be available to witness it when that becomes a reality.”

“ I invite you all to come along with us on this growth plan. We mean business and will do whatever we say that we will do in order to keep our aircraft in the sky and etch our name, United Nigeria Airlines, on the annals of Nigeria’s aviation index. We shall do our utmost best to ensure that our customers, old and new, enjoy every flight with us. Our is a mission to serve Nigerians diligently and satisfactorily. So, like a pilgrim on a mission, we shall not leave any stone unturned in our bid to be on top of the Nigerian aviation ladder, God willing. It is our commitment to render very efficient services and all our staff are tuned in to this.”