Tuesday, February 17, 2009

High costs may force airlines to merge flights

Local airlines are already looking into signing interlining agreements with one another as hard time and competition are hitting the sector heavily.

The Assistant General Secretary, Airlines Operators of Nigeria, Alhaji Muhammed Tukur, in an interview with newsmen in Lagos, on Monday, said that three airlines, which were not receiving good patronage, were considering the option in order to mitigate the skyrocketing cost of operations.

Interlining is a voluntary commercial agreement between individual airlines to handle passengers travelling on itineraries that require multiple airlines.

This means that when a ticket is issued for an interline itinerary, one of the carriers marketing flights in that itinerary will be selected by the ticketing agent as the “plating carrier.”

According to Tukur, the global financial crisis; devaluation of the naira; and low traffic as well as high cost of operation among other challenges facing the carriers had made such an option necessary.

He said, “Airlines are really suffering. Some of them are closing routes and they are trying to interline. We are planning interlining with each other to survive.”

He explained that the interlining agreement would help airlines to overcome the problem of having to operate to a destination with less than 20 passengers.

Three airlines for instance, he said could combine 20 passengers each in one aircraft for the trip, rather than picking 20 passengers each to the same destination.

The system was said to have been first introduced in the late the early 1990s between EAS and Bellview Airlines could not work for long for reasons unknown.

Analysts say that ego by airline operators may not allow such method to hold ground in the sector.