First Nation switches from being a mass market airline and focuses on the niche charter sector

LOCAL carrier First Nation Airways has abandoned plans to return to the mass market and start offering chartered services instead because a reduction in the size of its fleet has left it with not enough planes to run scheduled flights.

In March this year, First Nation, one of Nigeria’s eight domestic airlines, voluntarily suspended its flight operations to reduce the costs. At the time, Chimara Imediegwu, the airline's director of flight operations, said it was not officially grounded but was re-programming its schedule.

Now, the airline plans to return into the market but it has decided to opt for the niche charter services sector for the time being. Captain Muhtar Usman, the director-general of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) , said the airline’s current non-scheduled status would remain so until it improved its aircraft fleet to at least two.

First Nation, which had been operating with one aircraft, was recently fined N33.5m for safety violations. Captain Usman, who spoke about the airline’s suspension of its scheduled services at the commencement of the United States Federal Aviation Administration’s audit of the NCAA in Lagos, said the regulator was working with the airline to ensure the payment of the N33.5m fine.

Captain Usman added: “The airline used one aircraft and they were on scheduled services, but the present status now is that the certificate of the airworthiness has been changed to non-scheduled service, which is charter service. So, they are no longer into scheduled service until they are able to meet the requirement.

“I will still reconfirm to you that whatever sanction we impose on any operator is in line with civil regulation and it’s not punitive, but corrective. First Nation was sanctioned, they appealed and the sanction was upheld, so, we are still working with them to pay the fine.

He pointed out that the NCAA does not want to cripple any operation but if it is safety related, the agency will not waste time. Rasheed Yusuf, First Nation's corporate affairs manager, said, however, that the airline's operations were not downgraded as being insinuated in some quarters.