Capt. Fola Akinkuotu is the Rector, International Aviation College, Ilorin, Kwara State. He spoke with SUCCESS NWOGU on the state of the nation's aviation, among other related issues.

How do we improve on safety in Nigeria's aviation sector?

It is multi-facetious issue.  One is that we have to keep training and retraining. Another is finance. Without finance, you cannot do a lot of things.  You cannot even do training. You cannot do maintenance and you cannot buy new or newer equipment. If you do not have proper financing, you cannot even plan properly. I will say there is need for funding.  Now how do you address funding? We have tried to address it in some ways.  I know many years ago, virtually many people could have said 'I have aeroplane, it has an eight year license.  It has an AOC' and therefore it starts taking passengers.  The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority said no, we have to scrap that.  You have to have a minimum of 12 aero planes to be qualified as an airline.  But the profit margin in the aviation industry is not as much as we think.

The aviation industry generates a lot of money. It is like a cash cow. But the profit is very little. How do you now want to make money in the aviation industry?  It is by ferrying of passengers.  So the more passengers you  are able to bring, the more seats that you can offer and are occupied, the better for your profit margin.

Could you expatiate?

If I own an airline and you have an airline, if you have two aero planes, and I have twenty, the chances of I doing better than you is there. This is because in a year, you may have only N2m and I can have N20m. So if the profit is in numbers of the per centage of our income, I have better chance of making money.  The point here is: we need to have more airlines.

How can the nation get more airlines?

Consolidate them.

Are they willing to merge?

I do not know. But we have to have more aircraft in an airline.

Look at the British Airways, they have many airplanes.  You want to compete internationally with British Airways, look at the number of the airplanes you have. If that is the issue and our population, although it is not quite as high as a lot of those places and our population is more than that of  the United Kingdom anyway, but the flying population may not be as high-based on income levels, but then we should  have bigger airlines.  We cannot have small airlines. I do not think that will work.

Are there other strategies to guarantee safety?

The other aspect as far as safety is concerned is to beef up the regulatory body. They regulatory body is doing well.  They have to be encouraged, expanded and funded well because if you do not have a good regulatory system, the tendency is that it might be difficult for you to monitor and do oversight functions which are essentially safety.

Are you saying that the airlines should merge for profitability?

That is the question that everybody has been looking at. Should they merge? Yes.  Can they merge? Nobody knows. This is largely because they have different cultures.  For you to have a merger, you have to be able to merge the cultures. I see a situation here that, yes you can ask that airlines should merge but if we could find a way to provide adequate funding, for the airlines to expand and get more airplanes such that at the end of the day, they  can have more volume.

Is it going to be the same with what is obtained in the banking system?

What we did in the banking system, has it worked the way it was envisaged or planned?  It is food for thought.

But what I think is that we need to have airlines that are big enough to compete.

For instance, an airline has ten airplanes and it is flying all the ten. They have period of maintenance. They go for C check that is supposed to take four  weeks. During that period, how do you move your schedule?  If we look at the numbers, if I have two airplanes and one is taken out for maintenance without a replacement, I have taken 50 per cent of my capacity. If Mr. B has 20 airplanes and one is out of the system.  It is one out of twenty. Then I have taken away five per cent. Compare the five per cent drop in available seats and 50 per cent.  It is a game of numbers.

So what is the solution?

The airlines should have access to funding. They have to be able to acquire more airplanes at rates that are competitive. What is not often seen in the airlines is the funding. You want to take an airplane here in Nigeria,  you go to the banks. A brand new 737 will cost $40m minimum. Multiply that by N160 of possible exchange rate, you can then see the huge amount. Do we have the financial institutions that can provide this kind of loan? No!

What about the financial institutions in  Nigeria?

The financial institutions we have are so far  providing short term funds used to fund long term investments. So there is a problem to get loan whereas in other places such funds as  pension funds are used. They are funds that are for long term funding.  And the airlines really do not have business buying airplanes. It is not the business of airlines to own airplanes. Their business is to fly people. So they want to lease their planes.  So we should have a system where people are able to lease and we have to demonstrate also that we are able to pay.  If you lease and they do not pay regularly you cannot carry the burden. So this is a culture that is affecting a whole lot of airlines.  It is known that we have the fault that we do not pay as at when due.  We have to revive the culture of paying promptly.  The airlines have to do it in such as a way that when they lease an airplane for somebody, they are still solid and then they can get more airplanes.

It is believed that because of air crashes, some prospective pilots have developed cold feet going into the aviation industry. How do you see this development?

We can say that the view is the correct point.  Whenever there is any crash or any incident, there is of course, some bit of fear or apprehension.  If you look at the aviation sector when there is a crash, there is down in patronage of passengers.  There may be downturn in other sectors but from what we have seen based on the interviews and assessments, I do not think  it impacted on our institution.

Then why have you not started your programmes?

We did not postpone the resumption of this session. We shifted the commencement date.  There are logistics issues that we have to meet when we want to commence a programme.  We have to get books and materials ready and the students themselves have to pay.  In this college, we offer admission and do assessment for prospective pilots, We give  them offers. Largely because of the amount that is involved, the time that we gave from the day they were assessed and found qualified to the day that they were supposed to pay was considered short even by the prospective pilots and their parents. This is why we had to re-scheduled. We were supposed to start on the first of July but we moved it to the 15 July.

What is the time duration for student pilots to graduate here?

18 months. Recently about six of our students have demonstrated the ability to fly the aero plane all by themselves, without instructors.

We are delivering as promised and we believe that in 18 months, we should be able to graduate them.

How many students do you?

Our plan was to start with 20 students but we started with 12.  The next intake is planned for 20. We anticipate that we should get close to 20. We are talking to other corporate entities that will sponsor students here.  We have discussion with some state governments to take a class. We are doing well and I know we are on course.

How much is each pilot expected to pay?

The cost as planned is N10.6m for the whole course.  We have chosen not to have a situation where people will pay piecemeal largely because it will affect the course, performance and the ability of  the students to finish on schedule.  And as such, our desire is that people should pay virtually all their money from inception.  However, we have allowed for people to pay half of it such  that  they can continue their programmes without any break and complete the payment before the end of the programmes.

The amount appears scary especially to the middle class.

Aviation anywhere is not cheap.  If we compare ourselves to the school of the same level of  standard in other parts of the country, even in the western countries,  we are  not expensive. Oxford is more expensive than we, they pay 57,000 pounds. A lot of schools are much more expensive than ours.

Somebody might tell you that he can go to South Africa or another school, the tendency is that I may be able to find a cheaper school.

But what I see here is this, if somebody is paying piecemeal and the period is longer, in that case, you do not get value for your investment in good time.

You have to look at time as a factor. Because if you go to any institution and they say 'give me N1m and we can start but I keep collecting that N1m from you twenty times,' then you have put in N20m.

But someone tells you that 'look give me N10m and I can finish the courses with the students in 18 months.'  This is more cost effective.

Here the airplane we have chosen a plane that our training is not hampered by lack of fear which happened sometime ago somewhere many years ago.  We opted to take Jetopha which is really available.  Our aircraft is much more modern.  We train students here more for the future. Our airplanes are glass cockpit.  Our aircraft have electronic flight instrument systems. This is what they are going to fly outside.

So when our students leave here, they are not odd. What they will confront in the airlines as far as instrumentation and cockpit presentations are concerned, will not be new to them. They are paying or investing for your future, rather than being taught something that is out of date in which case when they get into the future, they now have to invest again and again.