Arik Air celebrates 10yrs of exceptional flight services

...aims for more routes and robost fleet

Chairman of Arik Air, Joseph Arumeni-Ikhide (middle)

Arik Air, the largest airline in West and Central Africa has projected that it would increase the number of aircraft in the airline’s fleet from 28 to 52 in 2025.

This is just as the airline said it carried 19 million passengers in the last 10 years.

He said that Arik Air is now the market leader and the largest carrier in the region in terms of number of aircraft, capacity deployed, network and number of flights operated, having safely transported over 19 million passengers.

“In 2006, we flew just 29, 363 passengers. As at September 30, 2016, we have flown 19,543,951 passengers. That is the entire population of Kano, Imo, Delta and Kwara combined” He said.

The Managing Director OF Arik Air, Mr Chris Ndulue made this known while speaking at a media briefing in Lagos to mark the 10th anniversary of the airline that commenced flight operations in October 30, 2006.

He stated that the road to the airline’s 10th anniversary going has not been easy, adding that it took the collective support of Arik staff, the media for the airline to get to where it is today.

The Managing Director attributed the phenomenal growth of the airline to its business model which is based on modern equipment and new technology, high standards of maintenance and connectivity.

He stated that, given the airline’s dominant position in the aviation market today along with current and future planned capacity, it has the capacity to

According to him, “In the coming years, we hope to maintain our market leadership and our growth strategy involves substantially increasing our fleet from 28 aircraft today to 52 aircraft by 2025.

On routes development, Ndulue said, “On route development, we are also looking at starting new routes and we will update our customers with details in the New Year.”

The Arik Air Managing Director stated that 10 years on, the airline had delivered on its promises of operating the youngest fleet in West Africa with an average hull age of seven and eight years, creating employment opportunities and partnering with top maintenance providers such as Lufthansa Technik, Lufthansa Cityline and Samco Engineering under full “turn-key” maintenance service contracts from inception to date.

Recalled that Arik Air started scheduled flights on October 30, 2006 with only three daily flights between Lagos and Abuja now operates an average of 110 daily flights across a network of 18 domestic, 10 regional and three  international destinations including Johannesburg (South Africa), London Heathrow (UK) and New York JFK (USA).

Taking a retrospective look on the airline, Ndulue said, “In 2006, we flew just 29, 363 passengers. As at September 30, 2016, we have flown 19,543,951 passengers. That is the entire population of Kano, Imo, Delta and Kwara combined.”

On the challenges facing the domestic airlines including Arik Air, he mentioned the lack of Foreign Exchange, high cost of aviation fuel, adding that the effect of forex is that it affects the cost of operations.

Ndulue hinted that while oil prices went down, aviation fuel, he said increased drastically, calling on the Federal Government to assist Nigerian airlines to survive the present economic recession.

On expansion, the managing director said that the airline will in due in no distance time expand its operations to Asia, Middle East, Latin America, Europe and East Africa.

 Culled from AbelNews