From left: Director, Public Affairs and Consumer Protection, NCAA, Mr. Michael Achhimugu; Chairman of the Occasion, Chief Executive Officer/Founder, CITA Aviation Fueling Company Limited, Dr. Thomas Ogungbangbe; Keynote Speaker, Managing Director/ CEO Nigeria Airspace Management Authority, ENGR. Umar Farouk; Special Guest of Honour, Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr. Festus Keyamo and Director Public Affairs and Consumer Protection, NiMet, Mrs. Funke Adebayo Arowojobe, during the 28th Edition of LAAC Annual Conference themed “Aviation Survivability Amidst a Challenging Macro-Economic Environment”in Lagos on Friday
The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development Festus Keyamo (SAN) has called on the aviation authorities in United Kingdom to either allocate slot at Heathrow Airport to Nigerian only domestic airline operating to the country or ready to have British Airways remove from Lagos and Abuja airports to other Nigerian airports.
He gave the warning on Friday at the 28th Annual Conference of the League of Airport and Aviation Correspondents (LAAC) with the themeAnnual Conference themed: “Aviation Survivability Amidst a Challenging Macro-Economic Environment”held at Providence Hotel Ikeja GRA Lagos over the weekend.
Keyamo who said Nigeria is making a point with the demand, promised to send a Correspondence on the demand to his UK counterpart to ensure that the demand is met without any further delay.
“We only managed to get the London route recently for Air Peace. And we are pushing also for them to take us to Heathrow now. We are pushing. We want to make a point to them.
“I am writing a letter to my counterpart in United Kingdom. You can’t tell me that you have a slot committee. If you concession your airports to people, they should know that you have existing obligations in that airport.
“And they should respect those existing obligations under the BASAs. If we give you our number one airport, you should give us your number airport too. If not we will divert British Airways to somewhere.
“Without doing that, there can’t be real connectivity. You can’t do real connectivity. But when you get them into Heathrow, people can buy a lot of tickets and then they can co-share. That is the only way you can get our local airlines to co-share with other airlines. So that there can be connectivity and you can go to other parts of the world. Right? So, for them, how can these local people compete? They need access to aircraft. They need the capacity to acquire the aircrafts,” Keyamo explained.
