The Director General of Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Capt Musa Nuhu has revealed the magic wands employed to stop airlines operating in the country from growing their debt on the mandatory five percent Ticket Sales Charges (TSC) and Cargo Sales Charges (CSC).
Capt Nuhu made this known during an interactive session with members of League of Airport and Aviation Correspondents (LAAC), in his office on Monday, saying the payment condition is attached to the issuance and renewal of Airline Operators Certificate (AOC) to new and existing operators in the country
He explained that new airline operators are made to sign a tripartite agreement that the charges would automatically be deducted from them to avoid the problems associated with the payment of the charges in the past.
According to him, “The five percent ticket charges, almost all the airlines have integrated, What we’ve done now, if you are coming in, we are not going to give you an Airline Operators Certifcate (AOC) until you sign the tripartite agreement for the automatic deduction to save all the trouble. So we dont start arguing after six months,” he added, “if you are going to renew too, we ensure that you must have signed that.”
On the legacy debts by the airlines, Nuhu said while NCAA understands that the airlines, like other stakeholders in the industry, are passing through hard times, they would not be forced to pay their debts at once, but has come up with plans in agreement with the operators on how to pay the debts without allowing a growth.
“We have stopped the growth of the debt; for the legacy debt, we are working with the operators to come out with plans and a lot of them have complied and very soon we are going to start talking to them one by one on how to settle their whole debt.
“We know we are all in difficult times, so we can’t say give us all our money but also you have to bring a resonable plan on how you want to settle this amount. Some of all the airlines, maybe one or two are in the process of doing it so that should not be an issue.”
The Chief regulatory officer in the aviation industry in Nigeria who claimed he didn’t know the actual amount involved in the legacy debts, however said the debts would be reconciled and agreed upon with the affected airlines before the payment plans would be fully activated.
“I dont want to give you wrong figures, I can check and give you later, but I dont like saying what I am not sure of. Even the legacy debt when we tell you airlines are going to pay, no it is not that. We would sit down and do reconciliation meeting , we bring our numbers, you bring your numbers, if you dont agree you bring evidence of payment. So that is why I dont want to give numbers,” he said.
Nuhu who commended officials of AON for their efforts at addressing the payment of the debts, disclosed that the reconciliation process has actually taken off.
“There is this reconciliation meeting ongoing with the airlines and I have to thank Chairman and Vice Chairman of AON, they came to meet us and extended an olive branch and we are working on that,”he disclosed.
The Director General of Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has said that the relationship between the regulatory authority and airline operators in the country are better than before even as he accepted that some airlines are still complaining about its regulatory procedures.
Nuhu made this known yesterday in his office during an interactive session with members of League of Airport and Aviation Correspondents (LAAC).
I will start from the last question with regards to relationship with the airlines, I will refer you to AON and they can tell you about our relationship, in fact I think we have the best relationship with the airlines now, I have not seen any problem with the relationship. of course one or two people have complained, if we have 50, 30, 20 operators and one or two people complain,it’s normal, there is no big deal about it.
Nobody in NCAA can ground any operator without the approval of the Director General, absolutely nobody, can ground anybody. I will have you know that as the Director General, I am the only person that can ground any operator but we have good relatioonship with the airlines and operators but of course it’s not everybody that would be happy with us, that is normal.
on the 5 % TSC / CS C, I dont have the figures, honestly I can only cross check from my finance department but it’s less than pre-COVID but I think it is an improvement of what we got last year, but the exact figures I dont know, if you have asked me ahead of time, I would have gotten it.
The five percent ticket charge almost all the airlines have integrated, what we’ve done now, if you are coming in, we are not going to give you an AOC until you sign the tripartite agreement for the automatic deduction to save all the trouble so we dont start arguing after six months. if you are going to renew too, we ensure that you must have signed that.
We have stopped the growth of the debt, for the legacy debt we are working with the operators to come out with plans and a lot of them have complied and very soon we are going to start talking to them one by one on how to settle their whole debt.
We know we are all in difficult times, so we cant say give us all our money but also you have to bring a resonable plan on how you want to settle this amount. Some of all the airlines, maybe one or two are in the process of doing it so that should not be an issue.
Legacy debt: I dont want to give you wrong figures, I can check and give you later but I dont like saying what I am not sure of. Even the legacy debt when we tell you airlines are going to pay, no it is not that. So we will sit down and do reconciliation meeting , we bring our numbers, you bring your numbers, if you dont agree you bring evidence of payment so that is why I dont want to give numbers. there is this reconciliation meeting ongoing with the airlines and I have to thank chairman and vice chairman of AON, they came to meet us and extended an olive branch and we are working on that.
Issue of airport certification: Lagos and Abuja were certified and we are working with FAAN on recertification and two others, there has been some progress. The initial certification was based on provisonal and they needed to close some gaps,they’ve closed some gaps, some have not been closed and new gaps have come so we are working closely with the management of FAAN to close those gaps so that the certification process can be concluded as soon as possible.
Some of the projects they have to do are quite capital intensive but we are working with them and are getting some kind of assistance from the ministry to deal with some of the heavy items.
Apart from that we are also talking about initial certificationof Port Harcourt, Enugu,Kano airports. All the international airports have to be certified so it is quite a big project, the certification of five airports, three initial and two recertification and its quite huge but hopefully we would get this done as soon as possible.
