… Says MROs would drop maintenance cost by 50%
Pearl Ngwama
With the escalating cost of aircraft maintenance in foreign countries, domestic Carrier, Dana Air has indicated plans to set up a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility in the Country.
The Airline’s Chief Operating Officer (COO), Obi Mbanuzo, who dropped the hint in an exclusive interview with ‘Timenews reporter’ stressed that maintenance of airplanes locally would cut down domestic airlines cost of operations by 50 per cent.
According to him, Nigeria has 100 per cent technical expertise to carry out heavy checks of aircraft, pointing out that the bulk of the money spent on aircraft maintenance outside the shores of Nigeria goes into manpower.
He said: “In fact the meeting we’re about to have now is to discuss Dana’s plan to open a MRO, initially we have MRO for our own aircraft.
“For technical expertise I will say 100 per cent; in Nigerian we have the technical expertise to carry out heavy checks of aircraft.
“As I speak with you, today Dana Air can carry out a ‘C’ check on our aircraft, we can; we have expertise, we have the staff, we have knowledgeable people, a lot of our engineers have worked previously in MROs around the world.
“We don’t have the MRO present but we have the knowledge and capability to do it which is why we now work towards establishing our own MRO. So the question of capability is yes, we do have that.”
Mbanuzo lamenting the exorbitant cost of maintenance overseas owing to manpower disclosed that just flying the aircraft abroad for a check one way costs about $15,000 plus flight charges of about $2,000
He therefore noted that if indigenous carriers would domicile
maintenance of their fleet here in Nigeria cost would be reduced by at least 50 per cent because the accrued cost from flying to overseas, flight charges and manpower would have been cut off leaving the cost of spare parts which is the same globally.
“Right now we fly our aircraft abroad for checks; just flying the aircraft abroad one way costs about $15,000 and flight charges may be about $2,000 and the airplane goes there for a month, six weeks or eight weeks in some cases.
“Then the technician abroad earns four to five times what somebody in Nigeria will earn so manpower cost is the main thing that makes the charge very high.
“But if we domicile all that here in Nigeria, yes the technicians will be here in Nigeria but the manpower cost is lower. You remember how China became the workshop of the world through lower cost of manpower.
