Aero CEO Slams Airlines for Festive Fare Hikes

It’s wrong…not sustainable, says Sanusi

By Eshioromeh Sebastian, Abuja

The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Aero Contractors, Captain Ado Sanusi, has strongly criticised the practice of hiking airfares during peak travel seasons, calling it “wrong” and “not sustainable” for the aviation industry.

Ado made the remark during an interview with ARISE NEWS on Thursday, when reacting to questions on the skyrocketing ticket prices during festive periods.

“When you look at this price now, I mean airfares, sometimes you see that the places where there are more airlines, like during Christmas time, flights were going up to maybe N300,000, N400,000, N500,000 one way. It was incredible”, he said.

He cited a recent example, “Last month the return ticket from Warri to Lagos was N570,000. What triggered it? No, no. You see, all those prices that you see that are quite high are called demand.”

Sanusi argued that airlines should take a different approach, “This is not how we used to do it. This is not a sustainable way to grow an industry…I believe when there is a festival or when there is something, that is when you should even reduce your prices; so that you can get more people to travel.”

Explaining Aero Contractors’ strategy, he said: “When everybody was increasing price, Aero Contractors reduced price to N80,000 at that period. And what did we do? Why did we do that? We wanted to give people that would have probably gone to enter a bus to have the experience of flying, to understand that we sell safety and speed.”

On regulatory reforms, Sanusi was emphatic: “Well, stronger institutions, it is very, very key. I think I will appeal to the government to ensure that our regulator in the industry should be given the full autonomy, should be given the full power to be the regulator.”

He added that “everywhere in the world, the DGCA will be the first person to call if you are going to have an experience of flying…Look at how CBN is. CBN is well respected among the banks, among even the financial institutions. That is how Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority should be”, he advised.