Captain Ado Sanusi is the Managing Director of Aero Contractors Company, an airline registered in 1959 and which has been in operation in Nigeria since 1960. He speaks with DAPO FALADE on the sustaining power of the company and sundry issues affecting the aviation industry in the country, especially in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Aero Contractors was registered in 1959 and started operations in Nigeria in 1960. How have you been able to weather through the storm, over the years?
Aero Contractors is one of the oldest companies in the aviation industry. It has been in existence for 60 years now. We have evolved from the oil and gas sector to become a formidable name in maintenance. We have done the C-Check, the first in Nigeria. It is a heavy maintenance that was done on Boeing 737. Next to that is the D-Check. We did the C-Check in 2017 when I was appointed as the Managing Director.
As I said earlier, the company started out from being an oil and gas servicing company to a full-fledged airline, to a full-fledged MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operations) and to a full-fledged charter company. So we have almost four distinctive business units: the MRO, the full-fledged airline, the charter company and the training organisation, that is the Aero-approved training organisation.
I think what has helped Aero Contractors over the years-we have been consistent in one thing in the last 60 years-and that is safety. Aero Contractors is synonymous with safety and the high quality standard airline operation that it has been known for. That is part of what has been sustaining the company over the years.
In the course of the years, up till 2016 or thereabout, you had about 17 aircraft in your fleet. But things took a turn for the worse thereafter and you are left with just seven now. How have you been coping?
In 2012 and 2013, the economy of the country went down. The naira was devalued and so many other things happened to the economy. Aviation, being a very dollar-intensive industry, could not cope with the negative economic situation and there were so many airlines that went under around 2014 and 2015.
Aero Contractors went into depression. It was under-performing and it was in distress and then, it came into crisis management. That was the situation when I was appointed to manage the crisis and then to usher the company into recovery.
Like you said, there was a time that we had up to 17 aircraft in our fleet. But it even got worse at a point as we had just two airplanes. When I joined, we had only two and all the aircraft were due for heavy maintenance. We had to look inward, in line with the saying that necessity is the mother of inventions. That was what actually made us to look inward and make sure that we have the C-Check. We did a C-Check on our airplanes and we did their maintenance in-house. Then, we increased the fleet size from the two that we had, up to seven. We revived the company and it was gradually coming up. Unfortunately, COVID-19 pandemic came and hit us.
But I am very confident; Aero Contractors is a resilient company. I have fantastic staff who are very dedicated and committed to making sure that we survive. And the result is what we are seeing now, even in the era of COVID-19.
When you were taking over Aero Contractors, a company with such a rich pedigree but in distress, how did you feel?
I would say that when I was given the offer, it humbled me and I was very grateful that they felt that I am in a position to offer my service to the company. But to tell you the truth, if I should take the words of President Muhammadu Buhari, when I saw the problems of Aero Contractors, I said, ‘Waow, I shouldn’t have taken this job because it was huge.’ But I believe that the workers are so dedicated, very very dedicated that there is very little that you can compare them to. You know when somebody is dedicated to a cause, you cannot compare him or her to any other person.The workers believed in the company and they wanted it to survive. And that is my driving power; that is what keeps me coming to the company everyday. When I picked the job in 2017, sometimes I will be walking into my office without knowing how I am going to pay salaries. I don’t know because we were making less than N180 million a month and our salary is over N400 million at that time. So how am I going to be paying the salary?
But when I come to work, I see the gardener, I see the sweeper and others, they are all dedicated; they are doing their job. That actually put me into a position to say, ‘okay, let me give them that trust that they have in this company’ and the result has been quite impressive.
This is a very critical moment in our national life, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. You are in a competitive industry, but what do you think gives you an edge over others, especially now?
Well, first of all, COVID-19 hit the aviation industry hardest; let us get that clear, from the outset. No single airline would say the pandemic has not hit them hard. The International Airline Transportation Association (IATA) has said that we are yet to see the magnitude of the negative impact of the pandemic.Now to your question about what gives Aero Contractors an added advantage over other companies. Aero Contractors is a brand and has been known to be safe. It has been a household name in Nigeria over the years. There was a time when we had only Aero Contractors and the Nigerian Airways. Everybody knew that Aero Contractors was a safe, reliable way to fly. Of course, other companies came on board thereafter.So, what I will say gave Aero Contractors an advantage is the name, one. Of course, it is a brand that was built over the years and it is known for its reliability, safety and all that.
There are negative reports of underhand dealings in the sector. It is a public knowledge that one airline, in violation of the rules guiding against the spread of COVID-19, took a popular musician to Abuja. How did you see this?
The pandemic actually brought out some of these things you are seeing now. I have been saying it in my various media interviews that there is a systemic problem in Nigeria’s aviation industry where owners of aircraft put their aircraft into use-I don’t want to use the word but I will use it-as kabukabu. That is the problem and we have said it several times that this is against any international practice and it is also against safety practice.When you use your car as a taxi, it must meet a certain requirements. So also when you use your aircraft as a chartered aircraft, it must meet a certain requirements. But we don’t do that; we are not meeting the requirements. These people will bring their private aircraft into the country and use them as taxi. The Abuja incident has exposed them.I think the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAN) is doing a good job to making sure that they limit the practice and put a stop to it. And I believe that they would do just that because the new Director General is adamant that he is not going to allow that to happen anymore. I believe and I am very comfortable with what he has said about the use of private airplanes for chartered businesses.The issue is very simple. When you buy an aircraft and you say ‘it is for my personal use’, you will meet a certain requirements because the government thinks that ‘you are using it for yourself and so you can kill yourself. There is no problems’. But when you intend to use it for commercial purposes, the requirements are more and you must keep to those certain standards and values. The training, the maintenance and every other things change because you are now using it for a higher worth. Then, if you are using it for a higher worth, you must meet those certain requirements, the same way I must meet the requirements when I put passengers on board the aircraft of Aero Contractors.
It is a very difficult and very intense industry that requires that you must meet those stringent requirements before they could allow you to put passengers on board the aircraft. It is the same thing when you buy an aircraft that belongs to you and you now want to put it into commercial use.
There have been allegations that airline operators bring into the country aged aircraft that are no longer serviceable. This practice has been said to be the cause of many air travel accidents…
Well, the age of the aircraft is not really a factor for an accident. The Max Boeing 737, for example, was one of the new aircrafts that crashed because of the design. So, you cannot correlate the age of the aircraft with accidents.But, at the same time, you asked a very valid question. We must retain those standards for maintaining the aircraft. This is because the older the aircraft, the more checks are required. Some aircraft have 25, 000 hours; some have 10, 000 hours. We must keep to those strict conditions in maintaining those old aircraft. And it is even more expensive to bring in an older airplane into the country and maintain it. It is rather cheaper to have a more newer airplane and it consumes less fuel.Yes, it is a fact that some airlines bring airplanes that are old, but I will attribute it to the entire economy of the country. Now, why did I say that? Nigeria is one of the most economically advanced countries in Africa. There is a claim that we have the largest economy in Africa; probably South Africa is ahead of us. But we are the largest in Sub-Saharan Africa. But do you know that there is no single brand new commercial aircraft brought into this country, after Arik? There is no single one.Yet, we are the sixth largest producer of oil; we have a lot of money. Why can’t we go to the manufacturers and get brand new aircraft? Rwanda that went through years of war and genocide has a good airline, with brand new commercial aircraft. The same thing with Ethiopia and Kenya. These are countries, with all respect to them, that cannot stand economically with Nigeria.
Would you ascribe that failure to misplaced priority on the part of the government?
Well, I keep saying it; aviation is the catalyst for economic growth. So, if a country refused to understand that and instead say ‘okay, we are going to put everything together to make sure that we economically grow and leave out aviation out of it’, they are making a big mistake. They can see it in Emirate; they see it in Dubai and many other places in the world. The five major airlines in the US, when they had the 9/11 attack, the government quickly went to their rescue because they know that, that is key to the economic recovery of that country.Even now with COVID-19, they are going to save the airlines because they know that the airlines are key to their economic recovery. Lufthansa was saved by the European Union (EU) because they know that it is key to the economic recovery of Europe. This same thing applied to the British Airways. Every airline in the world is key to the economic recovery of any country. If we don’t do it here in Nigeria, we should not expect to have a different result.
To stay afloat, some of the operators in the industry are laying off staff. It was in the news on Monday that Air Peace laid off 69 pilots. Are you thinking in that direction too?
You see, the pandemic has caused a lot of damage. I sympathise with Air Peace and I spoke with him (the owner) several times. He is a very good person that will not want to owe salaries of staff. Now, if the survival of the company depends on shedding, let it be, so that the company can survive.I will liken it to a ship. Let us say you are on a canoe and water is coming in to it. For you to reach the shore, you have to move some people out. So, it is either you all sink and die or you move some people out and then sail. Thereafter, you can now call for help to rescue the other people out there. So, I think that is what he did; he is shedding out the excess that he has because he knows that, in the next two or three months, there might not be any activity and he is looking at a way to make sure that the company survives. I sympathise with him, but I think that he is doing the right thing.
Where do you see the aviation industry, post-COVID-19 era?
First of all, I think I should I ask you what has the government done to help the aviation industry? I am not an economist but I believe that if the government can allocate fund for some certain sectors, avaition must be one of them. I believe that if we are very sincere on the recovery of the economy, into which they are pumping trillions of naira, I think one of the stimulus should go to aviation. But we are yet to see anything and that is the result that we are seeing.
You see, Air Peace laid off 69 pilots. You are looking just at the number, but the number is more than that. It may translate to 3,000 pilots or more than 3,000 families, looking at the multiplier effects. If the Federal Government had given him the needed aid in order not to retrench…I said something about smart bailouts in my interview with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA). When you want to give a smart bailout, you can say ‘I am going to give this amount, but I want you to guarantee that these workers would remain in their jobs for the next six months’. So, if you give me half or 75 per cent of their salary for the next six months, I think that is reasonable. And that would stop all these issues of retrenchment and fallowing that we are seeing.The problem is that we need to be sincere on whether the bailout or the stimulus the government is pushing out is actually going to stimulate the economy. If you are pumping trillions of naira into the economy and you are not pumping anything into aviation, I cannot see how it is going to work.
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