 Welcome back. Nigeria's aviation sector has been rocked with withdrawal of services by two shadowed carriers but beyond the withdrawal of services by shadowed carriers the entire local aviation sector may be in for a shutdown if operations over steady loss of operations rather over the steady loss of fleet capacity that has made the shadow reliability near impossible now findings by the Guardian which you put out in the publication recently showed that eight active airlines are currently operating a cumulative 38.77 percent of fleet capacity with a total of 60 out of 98 listed airplanes Grounded if you look at that you do the mathematics if 60 out of 98 Listed airplanes are grounded then it therefore means that only 38 of them are active these are grounded pending the availability of foreign exchange earnings to defray Maintenance costs. It was also lent That most seats on the busy Lagos Abuja Port Hakot Kanu and Kaduna routes were available Where are available rather were sold for between 76,000 and 100 now for one-way economy seats and round-trip trip tickets ranging between 140,000 and 190,000 now depending on the route the airline and the time of Purchase it's quite a dull situation. You'll agree Isaac Balame is the CEO of seven star global Hanger and Airlines and he's a guest this morning as we take a look at this mr. Ballaby welcome to the breakfast Thank you for having me sir. All right. Is it just a good morning to is it just an issue of a scarce Forex and The high maintenance cost as a result of the forex situation Do we have more going on? What can you say about the fact that 38 out of 98 aircraft which in itself is even not enough? grounded So basically say is a function of Forex of course which led to the rise in the cost of aviation foil Usually a vision foil, you know cost about 40% of your operating costs, but today in most cases you see that Aviation foil is costing Even above 100% so sometimes the airlines just basically Try to sell tickets just to buy foil That is why you see the airline's problem with salaries of their workers That is why you see the airlines traveling with cost of maintenance because they can't even access the forex at the CBN exchange rate They can't even afford To pay their bills, you know the K train is there the maintenance is there the training every six months They must send the pilots over so there are so many factors. There are so many variables that is leading to that and it's And it's not a good thing at all all right So this is this what's directly impacting on the the cost of the flight tickets because I mean This is an airline whose name I don't mention But I want to travel to my Port Hackett. Like we say in Nigeria, I generally I don't spend too much money I go to this airline They have green in their logo and in their name and you find that you can get it for for a low buck You know, do you have to fly lit at night? But you go for cheap now. These guys are now charging 80,000 Naira I can't believe it 80,000 Naira To be very honest with you sometimes You see it's a tough situation and I believe not just for the aviation sector, but for the country at large You would agree with me Let's take the Boeing 737 for example where Most times you spend between 3.5 to 4 million Naira to foil your aircraft for just one hour flight Now you do the calculation sometimes you think that the airlines have full load factor in terms of filling up all the seats Right, but it's not like that if you take the average sometimes during weekend, you know, they fly full early week, maybe midweek, but most days and sometimes one aircraft does the minimum of six landings sometimes eight landings or more and at the end of the day If you calculate how much let's say they have 60 to 70 percent load factor, average leak They can't even pay for their costs. So the only way is to push that cost to the passenger and that is where You know, we've been calling and you heard the Minister of Aviation said it clearly That he's trying to intervene to see how the government can support the airlines and I think That is required immediately So now talking about solutions Since the only thing that can be done, you know, government to vision intervention to support the airlines What else can be done and if this intervention is the only way how exactly would you advise it be done? I think for now the government just have to find a way to subsidize To my own thinking in fact between seven to eight hundred NERA default it to calm down To as low as maybe four hundred NERA for the air and to actually survive If that's intervention can come in every quarter then at the end of every quarter We review it fine before the dollar issue is looked into Another issue also is we hope that did I go to your refinery because our local refineries That can produce jet even have been underlies decade ago And I don't think anything has been done by previous government to sort that out of the date So it's a major problem Problem here and I just hope that the only word for Korean Public to actually Feel less of the pain is for government to intervene on the jet a one so that the air and owners Can afford this jet a one and also pay for cost of maintenance and order operating costs Is there a way it's just something that could have been done by the aviation minister and the federal government at large to have Prevented this situation the generating to this point I don't think there's anything that anybody can do because this is a failure of leadership What a shame that since independence to date We have not been able to put a framework in place to produce our own fuel even petrol kerosene Diesel is being imported. We have Refineries, but they're not working. We have we we sell crude oil to the whole world But we export the raw materials and the important refined product So I think we need to have More serious people talking with our fears to see how we can plan for the future otherwise I don't even think our children even have a future anymore And the only way out is to stop complaining and go back to work All right. All right. I want to thank you very much for your time For joining us on the program this morning Isaac Bellamy and of course We look forward to having you subsequently as we continue to monitor The state of the aviation sector in the country He is the CEO of seven star global hunger and airlines and his Jonas live from Abuja Isaac. Thank you very much for your time Thank you very much for having me Up next we discuss some more issues right here on the breakfast Minister of Communications and the digital economy is up under me is against the federal government's New tax on phone calls and data in the telecommunications sector. Look at that with our guests