Medview Airline has disclosed that due to the high cost of aviation fuel in Nigeria, it has spent about N22 billion on purchases in the last five years.
The airline stated that in an effort to streamline its operations, it had to lay off 52 members of staff from both technical and administrative areas of its operation.
According to the Managing Director of the airline, Alhaji Muneer Bankole, the high cost of aviation fuel in Nigeria was depleting airlines’ little profit, he added that the airlines were at the receiving end of all the bureaucracies the commodity go through before being sold to operators.
He further hinted that the prices of the product increase anytime it becomes scarce and due to the hiccups in the supply of aviation fuel to different parts of the country, there is no uniformity, adding that fuel marketers sell at arbitrary prices as the product is deregulated.
“We now buy a litre of aviation fuel at N220 in Lagos but up in the North in places like Maiduguri, it is about N260. That is the unfortunate situation we have found ourselves,” he said.
Bankole stated that the perennial shortage of aviation fuel, coupled with the gridlock faced in moving the product have become a clog in the wheel of domestic airlines as they find it difficult to operate smoothly like their counterparts in other parts of the world.
Also he said that the price of the product is critical to an airline and also considering the fact that fuel consumption amounts to about 30 per cent of the cost of operation for an airline, there is need to quickly find more reliable ways to ensure the supply and distribution of the product.
