By Louis Ibah
Aero Contractors Airline yesterday announced the receipt of approval by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to commence the maintenance and repair of aircraft in its newly constructed Aircraft Maintenance Organisation (AMO) facility sited within the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos.
Managing Director of Aero Contractors, Mr. Ado Sanusi, who disclosed this in a press briefing in Lagos yesterday, said the multi-million naira facility would, however, attend only to the C-checks of the ‘Boeing 737 classic’ type of aircraft, which is the most commonly used aircraft by airlines in Nigeria.
Sanusi said the investment in the facility had become inevitable given that the crash in the fortunes of most airlines in Nigeria could be linked to aircraft servicing and maintenance offshore at very exorbitant cost utilising scarce foreign exchange.
He said it costs an airline between $1.8 million and $2 million (about N800 million) to carry out a C-check on a Boeing 737 classic aircraft and that with the facility, that cost would be reduced by half and the amount also paid in naira.
“The Aero Contractor family is pleased to announce that the NCAA with effect from September 12, 2017 has approved our AMO facility for C-check on the Boeing 737 classic aircraft,” said Sanusi.
“This represents for us a significant achievement and the feat has benefits far beyond Aero to other airlines given that C-checks on the Boeing 737 classic can now be performed in Nigeria and this will obviously result to a significant drop in the maintenance costs for airlines in Nigeria and the sub-region,” Sanusi added.
Corrigendum
Total Exploration and Production Nigeria Limited has written to us that it was inadvertently linked to the release of 750 gas trucks to distribute gas to customers in our story of September 4, 2017 titled “Confusion on Nigerian Roads as NNPC, Total release 750 gas truck.”
We have since discovered that the gas sales agreement which Total E&P Nigeria Limited signed was for the supply of gas to Greenville Oil and Gas Limited through pipeline and not that Total is directly involved with gas delivery to customers of Greenville.
The error is regretted.
–Editor