Travel News

The cost of renting a room in London is surging, the latest blow to the city’s poorest residents.

It costs 15% more to rent a room in the capital than it did last year, according to data compiled by SpareRoom, a website that matches people seeking roommates. And the burden is not being evenly distributed across postcodes.

Prices have risen almost 20% from pre-pandemic levels in suburban districts like Lower Edmonton and in areas in and around Eltham. By comparison, they’re up just 1% in the same period in the affluent postcode that includes Belgravia in central London.

UK home prices are more unaffordable than ever for potential buyers, contributing to soaring rents in the capital. Energy costs have also sent inflation to a 40-year high, crimping the amount people can pay and leaving many able to afford only a room.

“Whenever we go through some sort of financial squeeze, like we did just over a decade ago, a lot of people end up in the room rental markets, partly because it’s the most affordable way to live,” Rupert Hunt, Chief Executive Officer at SpareRoom, said by email.

Soaring Demand

While the capital has areas of great wealth, it is also home to some of the most deprived parts of the UK, meaning people are more vulnerable to the rising costs of everything from food to fuel. 

A quarter of Londoners wouldn’t be able to afford an unexpected expense of £500, according to a poll by Centre for London and Savanta ComRes in the spring. That’s four percentage points higher than nine months earlier. 

One attraction of renting a room is that landlords are more likely to include bills in the price, said Jeremy Leaf, a real estate broker who leases properties in north London. That fixed cost is an attraction with energy prices spiraling.

Home Working

There’s also more demand in the suburbs because renters are seeking more space so they can have a desk in their room, said Aneisha Beveridge, head of research at broker Hamptons International. That gives them the option of working from home a few days a week, she said.

Tommy Power, a 35-year-old working for fintech Monzo Bank Ltd., said competition for rooms means he is getting fewer and fewer responses when he asks to see a place. 

Renting a room is more attractive than leasing an apartment because it’s significantly cheaper and offers more flexibility around moving out, he said. 

People are being pushed “into renting, into sofa surfing, into going back to their parents,” said Paul Cheshire, emeritus professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics. That means they’re moving to cheap parts of London and “pushing up demand there relative to supply.”

Bloomberg) -- Deutsche Lufthansa AG forecast profit will keep rising in coming months amid a boom in demand, even as staffing shortages prompt airports to limit capacity.

Europe’s biggest airline group said it expects a “significant increase” in earnings in the third quarter compared to the second. That’s after high ticket prices and bumper profits at the company’s cargo division more than offset increases in fuel costs in the second quarter. 

Lufthansa also provided a clearer outlook for full-year profit, predicting adjusted earnings before interest and taxes of more than 500 million euros ($508.2 million). The airline previously said only that it expected an improvement in 2022 compared with last year.

While travelers across Europe are grappling with disrupted flights amid the staffing crunch and a wave of strikes, the region’s airlines are making money again as travel rebounds from the Covid crisis. Capacity caps introduced to avoid late cancellations may have crimped passenger tallies, but they’ve also lifted fares in a business where demand was already close to matching supply.

Having reduced its workforce during the pandemic, Lufthansa said it will hire some 10,000 new employees over the next 18 months, a move aimed at smoothing disruptions to travel.

“Together, we have steered our company through the pandemic and thus through the most severe financial crisis in our history,” Chief Executive Officer Carsten Spohr said in a statement Thursday. “Now we must continue to stabilize our flight operations.” 

Lufthansa posted adjusted earnings before interest and taxes of 393 million euros for the second quarter, after saying last month that the figure would total between 350 million euros and 400 million euros.

Rivals Air France-KLM and British Airways parent IAG SA last week posted positive earnings for the first time since global travel was roiled by the pandemic. The former plans to hike capacity close to pre-coronavirus levels in the final three months of 2022, while IAG predicts higher earnings this quarter and a positive full-year result.

Residents of the Federal Capital Territory may soon experience a fresh round of fuel scarcity, as The PUNCH reliably gathered that tanker drivers have declined to take products to the FCT due to bad road network and high diesel prices.

Sources with the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, and Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association of Nigeria disclosed this to our correspondent on Tuesday.

They stated that though there were enough products as promised by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, members of the National Association of Road Transport Operators were not ready to take products to the capital city.

It was also gathered that members of NARTO had lost nothing less than seven tankers, including products as a result of the bad road network to Abuja.

“As of Tuesday, marketers were ready to pay as much as N1.2m to take products to Abuja, but no driver was ready to put their lives and tankers on the line. There is enough product but drivers are unwilling to go there,” a source with DAPPMAN told The PUNCH.

The marketers also decried the rising costs of freight rates.

“When price of petrol was increased last month, the dollar was between N600 to N620, but it is now N700. Cost of hiring a vessel is now $50,000 per day, including NNPC trucks. It costs more than $50,000 per day to take products to states like Calabar, and we still pay for vessels in dollars”, the DAPPMAN source added.

A source with IPMAN corroborated what the DAPMAN member said, stressing that tanker drivers were unwilling to take products from Warri to Abuja due to bad roads.

The Executive Secretary, National Association of Road Transport Operators, Aloga Ignatius, declined commenting on the development when contacted.

“I’m in a meeting. Can’t talk,” he said, directing our correspondent to send text which was not responded to as at the time of filing this report.

A professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Akpan Ekpo, called on the Federal Government to use trains instead of tankers as new means of transporting petroleum products across the country.

He said, “If the drivers’ refusal to take products to Abuja persists, it will cause hoarding and then scarcity, which will lead to high prices. This news is definitely not good for the economy because it will affect our GDP, and increase inflation.

“Nigeria should adopt the method of moving petrol through trains. Moving products through tankers is old fashioned. And again, the roads should be repaired as soon as possible,” he said.

The development comes on the heels of recent scarcity in the FCT which stretched from February up until July.

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria asked Google to block the use of YouTube channels and livestreams by banned groups and terrorist organizations in the country, Information Minister Lai Mohammed said on Thursday.

Nigeria has been exploring ways to regulate social media usage in the country, Africa's most populous. The country is home to millions of internet users and platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Tiktok are popular.

YouTube "channels and emails containing names of banned groups and their affiliates should not be allowed on Google platforms," Mohammed said he told Google executives in Abuja, the country's capital.

Charles Murito, Google's sub-Saharan African director for government affairs and public policy, in a statement said the company already has measures to address the Nigerian government's concerns.

Those measures include a system for trained users to flag troublesome content, he added. "We share the same goals and objectives," Murito said. "We do not want our platform to be used for ill purposes."

The minister said the government was particularly concerned with online activities by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). The government has labeled IPOB, a group campaigning for the secession of a southeastern region of Nigeria, a "terrorist organization."

The YouTube concerns are part of an effort by the government, the minister said, to protect Nigerian internet users from harmful effects of social media, especially ahead of a presidential election next year.

Nigeria suspended Twitter in June 2021 and blocked access to users after the social media giant removed a post from President Muhammadu Buhari threatening to punish regional secessionists.

The government lifted the Twitter ban six months later.

(Reporting by Felix Onuah and Camillus Eboh; Writing by Chijioke Ohuocha. Edited by Paulo Prada.)

KEY POINTS

• Airlines have canceled flights to Taipei and rerouted others to avoid airspace nearby that has been closed to civilian traffic during Chinese military exercises sparked by U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.
• China deployed scores of planes and fired live missiles near Taiwan on Thursday in its biggest-ever drills in the Taiwan Strait, set to run until noon local time (0400 GMT) on Sunday.
• The airspace involved, however, is minor in its impact on the global aviation industry compared to the decision by most airlines to bypass overflight of other places like Russia, Ukraine, Afghanistan, North Korea, Iraq and Syria.

A screen showing canceled flights at Taoyuan International Airport in Taoyuan, Taiwan, on Thursday, Aug. 4, 2022. China’s military fired missiles into the sea as it kicked off three days of live-fire military exercises around the island in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit, even as Taipei played down the impact on flights and shipping.
Lam Yik Fei | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Airlines have canceled flights to Taipei and rerouted others to avoid airspace nearby that has been closed to civilian traffic during Chinese military exercises sparked by U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.

China deployed scores of planes and fired live missiles near Taiwan on Thursday in its biggest-ever drills in the Taiwan Strait, set to run until noon local time (0400 GMT) on Sunday in six zones encircling much of the island.

The airspace involved is comparatively small, but the disruption from the largest military exercises by China in the area since it fired missiles off the coast in 1996 is hampering travel between Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia.

Temporary airspace closures and route changes during major military exercises occur regularly around the world.

This situation is unusual in that China’s exercises bisect Taiwan’s claimed 12 nautical miles (22 kilometers) of territorial waters — something Taiwanese officials say challenges the international order and amount to a blockade of its sea and airspace.

Korean Air Lines and Singapore Airlines said they had canceled flights to and from Taipei on Friday due to the exercises, with the Korean carrier also cancelling its Saturday flights and delaying Sunday flights.

Japan’s ANA Holdings and Japan Airlines are still operating flights to Taipei as normal, spokespeople for the airlines said, but are avoiding the affected airspace on those flights, as well as on routes to Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.

Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways and Philippines Airlines said their flights were avoiding designated airspace zones around Taiwan, in a move that could lead to more flying time for some flights, while Vietnam’s aviation regulator warned its airlines to avoid the area.

Flight tracking service FlightRadar24 showed Taiwanese carriers China Airlines and EVA Airways were still flying to and from the island as of Friday morning, as were cargo carriers FedEx and United Parcel Service, though avoiding the areas affected by the military drills.

Emirates, United Airlines Holdings and Turkish Airlines had flights en route to Taipei on Friday morning local time, Flightradar24 showed.

Taiwan, along with mainland China and Hong Kong, is one of the few places in the world that still requires quarantine for arrivals because of Covid-19, triggering reduced demand for travel to the island that means there are far fewer flights than before the pandemic.

OPSGROUP, an aviation industry cooperative that shares information on flight risks, said the exercises would affect major routes between Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia, leading to re-routings that could take longer and burn extra fuel.

The airspace involved, however, is minor in its impact on the global aviation industry compared to the decision by most airlines to bypass overflight of other places like Russia, Ukraine, Afghanistan, North Korea, Iraq and Syria.

The avoidance of Russian airspace, for example, has led to a near four-hour increase in flight times between Finland and Japan.

Taiwan said on Wednesday it was negotiating with neighboring Japan and the Philippines to find alternative aviation routes, the official Central News Agency (CNA) reported.

BY Christopher Jasper and Manus Cranny, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- Sign up for our Middle East newsletter and follow us @middleeast for news on the region.

Airports need to address their unpopularity as a workplace if they’re to resolve a labor crunch that’s spawned a summer of travel chaos, the world’s biggest ground-handling firm said.

While pay hikes may narrow the staffing gap, they won’t resolve deep-seated issues in attracting new recruits, Tarek Sultan, vice chairman of Agility Public Warehousing Co., said Friday after the Gulf firm completed the purchase of John Menzies Plc, which provides handling at hubs including London Heathrow.

“It’s really hard to hire people in this day and age after Covid and we’re really trying to figure out why,” Sultan said on Bloomberg Television. “Nobody has a 100% clear answer. We have to be competitive with our wages, but we also have to look at other ways to improve retention and make this industry a more attractive place to work.”

Heathrow last week blamed airlines and their ground handlers for the turmoil that’s been afflicting European travel for months as demand rebounds from the pandemic. Chief Executive Officer John Holland-Kaye said they’ve been too slow to recruit and that handlers including Menzies are in some cases not paying enough to compete with firms like Amazon.com Inc. as they seek staff.

Sultan said that while Kuwait-based Agility understands that it must invest to beef up the workforce, costs would need to be passed on and the airline industry right now is “not the ideal place to be looking to increase prices to customers.” Expenses would have to be offset “in a very measured way.”

He said the travel situation should improve over the next couple of quarters, and that in future the aviation industry as a whole needs to do better in anticipating demand and coordinating step changes in operations.

Read more: U.K. Airport Handler Menzies Accepts $750 Million Kuwaiti Bid

Edinburgh-based Menzies said Friday that its London Stock Exchange listing was canceled as of 7 a.m. after Agility completed the 571 million-pound ($694 million) takeover.

Agility’s National Aviation Services will take on the name and identity of the Scottish firm, which traces its origins back almost 190 years and provides ground handling, aircraft fueling and cargo services at more than 200 locations in about 40 countries.

NAS operates at about 55 airports across the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

Insists Italian who killed Nigerian must be prosecuted

BY  Nume Ekeghe in Lagos, Kingsley Nwezeh and Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja

The Chairperson, Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM) Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa has noted that the recent incidents of various cult clashes and crimes committed by Nigerians in Dubai have caused stringent visa accessibility, making it impossible for males below 30 to be granted visas.

She also said that the unfortunate incident where a Nigerian, Mr. Alika Ogorchukwu was beaten to death in Italy is a priority for the Nigerian Embassy in Italy, stating that the accused must be tried and prosecuted accordingly.

She said this yesterday when she featured on ‘The Morning Show’ on Arise News Channel, a THISDAY broadcast station.

On visa accessibility by Nigerians, she said: “I think a few Nigerians have taken bad behaviour too far and we have to admit and accept that. It is not about profiling or generalisation, it has gone too far. So, what the Dubai authorities have done is they’ve made their visa processes more stringent. So if you are a male below 30, no visa for you. It is very difficult, they have made it so stringent that you’re not likely to fulfill it. It doesn’t matter who you are.”

“Secondly, if you’re looking to Dubai now, you have to provide a six-month bank account, you have to have your return ticket and you must show proof of accommodation and if you lie, they are going to know and turn you back.”

“So, let’s learn to obey laws of other countries and just do the right things because there are too many good Nigerians in Dubai.”

Also giving an update on Ogorchukwu’s case, she noted that the Italian government has been very cooperative and that the Nigerian consulate would not allow it to be brushed under the carpet.

She added: “In the case of Alika, the autopsy is out and he died of suffocation. A meeting is actually ongoing, just like yesterday with the Nigerian ambassador, and officials of the Italian authorities on the next steps forward. The person is with the police and now the next step is to charge him to court.”

“And as of yesterday, 15,000 euros were actually donated to Alex’s wife. It was a contribution by the Italians, the Nigerian community and everybody rallied around to support this particular course that was really a case of evil wickedness.”

“And the Nigeria Ambassador to Italy is of course demanding that this case must be tried to the logical conclusion. No excuses whatsoever. And the Italian authorities are very cooperative. In fact, they’ve been very, very cooperative, because they all admitted that this really is one death that didn’t need to happen. So, the Nigerian ambassador is on top of the situation.”

“The Nigerian embassy will definitely ensure that this case is not swept under the carpet,” she said.

Muhammadu Sanusi II, former Emir of Kano, has expressed great concerns about the current state of the country. He said Nigeria is now in...

Muhammadu Sanusi II, former Emir of Kano, has expressed great concerns about the current state of the country.

He said Nigeria is now in a worse situation compared to what obtained in 2015 when President Muhammadu Buhari took over from former President Goodluck Jonathan.

Sanusi spoke on Thursday in Lagos at the Akinjide Adeosun Foundation (AAF), leadership colloquium and awards.

“This is the only oil-producing country that is grieving at the moment when oil prices have gone up as a result of the Russia/Ukraine war. Our total revenue is not able to service our debt. And if anybody does not understand that we are in a complete mess, we are.

“We were in a deep hole in 2015. And between 2015 and now, we have been digging ourselves into a deeper hole.

“We thought we had a big problem in 2015. 2015 is nothing compared to what will happen in 2023. We have terrorism, we have banditry, we have inflation, we have an unstable exchange rate, and the worst thing is that those in leadership actually think we are going to thank them when they leave office, that we are going to appreciate them. There is no change.

“There is no sense of urgency. If you are running a company and your sales revenue cannot pay interest, you know you’re bankrupt.

“When the total revenue of the Federal Government cannot service debt we are smiling. These are the kinds of questions we need to ask. And the reality is that there are so many Nigerians, who, given the opportunity will do well but they simply cannot contest in that space,” he said.

The former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, hinged the challenge on the lack of vision of some of the country’s leaders.

He added, “What is our vision for Nigeria? Do we have a vision of one country? Do we have a vision of one united country, that lives peacefully with itself — diverse, multicultural, multi-religious but one?

“Leaders after leaders, most of those who have ruled did not have a vision for a united Nigeria. How would you like to be remembered after eight years as a President, after eight years as a governor, eight years as a minister, eight years as Governor of CBN? How will you like history to remember you? They have not thought about it.

“The vast majority of those in office have a vision that is limited to the next election. It is to win. And when you’ve won, you’ve reached a destination, not a journey.”

By Kingsley Jeremiah, Abuja

National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), yesterday, in Abuja, confirmed growing use and importation of hard substances in Nigeria.

Addressing the maiden Auto CEO Forum, sponsored by GSCL Transport Media Group, NDLEA Chairman, Buba Marwa, said about one ton of Colorado had been discovered in the last three years.

He said the automotive sector remains a key focus in the war against drug abuse, adding that collaboration was needed to sanitise the sector.

Represented by a controller, Samuel Bashir Gadzama, the chairman observed that most of the drugs imported come via vehicles from Canada.

Noting that the trend, discovered in 2020 during the lockdown, is worrisome, Marwa said some players in the automotive industry were using the business as a cover to achieve their nefarious objectives.

His words: “We are focusing on them. We have had cases where we closed down some automotive shops. There are cases where we have to investigate some individuals.

“We are not after duty. We have two concerns. We are either looking for the drug or proceeds.”

Marwa said the agency had no direct business with the automotive sector apart from addressing drug-related issues, adding that “there is the need for the players to support the campaign against drug and understand related laws that may affect their operations.”

Speaking at the event, the representative of the organisers, Frank Kintum, admitted that Nigeria was going through a difficult phase economically, stating that the automotive industry is one of the worst hit.

“In the last few years, many auto assembly plants registered by the Federal Government to rejuvenate the nation’s economy a few years ago have closed down, while the few still struggling have been forced to downsize workers,” he said.

The Chief Operating Officer of Ibom Air and former Managing Director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, Mr Goerge Uriesi, discusses the prospects and challenges of the aviation industry, in this exclusive interview with Funmilayo Fabunmi

Some analysts have said that more airlines may suspend operations or go under if the current industry trend continues. Do you believe in this projection?

You know that things are very unusual now and everybody is struggling to stay on top of the game. Not that I expect that airlines will go down, but I will understand if any one goes down under the circumstances. This is because I know what we are grappling with here. It is hectic and almost ‘a touch and go’ situation because if the prices had risen to a particular level and we were grappling with managing that level, it would be a different game. But you wake up tomorrow morning, and they’ve added more money, meaning you don’t know how far it’s going to go. If you survive today, will you survive till tomorrow? So, eventually, at some point, our prayer is that, first of all, it stops rising so that we can say that this is the demon we are dealing with. However, if it keeps rising, there will be a breaking point for everybody. That’s the situation.

In your presentation at the just concluded League of Airport and Aviation Correspondents (LAAC) Conference, you said that the Nigerian system was set up to threaten airlines. Could you shed more light on that?

I didn’t mean ‘threaten airlines,’ I just said it threatens the ability of airlines to be productive because a lot of things, if done better, would allow airlines to have the availability of runways across the country as at when they want to use them. So, it’s not enough for an airport to say it has an instrument landing system, but is it working? If it is working, airlines can say they want to fly in and fly out. So, just saying that it is there does not make any difference because the bottomline is that the airlines can’t fly in when there’s a little bit of weather, and because of that, we’re unable to utilise our aircraft to the optimum.  Therefore, we leave a lot of revenue on the table and that revenue for the airlines, if you look at it from the airlines perspective, is revenue for everybody because the airlines pay everybody from that revenue. It pays the airport, the ground handler, Air Traffic Control, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority and everybody in that ecosystem. So, every time the opportunity for an airline to operate is not there when it could have been able to operate, it’s just a loss of opportunity in terms of revenue for the ecosystem. I gave numbers, very conservative numbers, to show what it means on an annual basis for an aircraft when we’re unable to utilise the planes because of one failure in the system or another.

That leads me to the next question. At the same conference, you did say in your paper that the country’s carriers were losing an average of N4 million naira per flight, N360 million in 90 flights and N4.3 billion annually on every flight to sunset airport operations. In light of this, do you think the sunset airport would save operators from losing this much money?

No, let me correct that, I didn’t say airlines lost that money, I said that it is the potential revenue that airlines could not get because they were unable to maximise the use of their airplanes. It is not that they are losing it. If the aircrafts were utilised in line with the rest of the world, that’s the potential additional revenue they would have had and that would have made the system much more viable. So, it’s not losses, it’s not like you’ve made money and then you lost it. It’s just that you’re unable to pursue that potential revenue because of that and I did not say it was as a result of sunset airports. The theme of the conference was ‘Sunset Airports’ but the topic of my presentation was ‘Runway Availability’. So, they are two different things. I was saying that even in the day time when the runway ought to be available, when there’s small weather, it’s not available because the navigational aids that will help you land in lower visibility are not there. So, the airport might as well have been closed from a used perspective because it’s daytime, but because there’s fog and it’s harmattan, you can’t fly in. But if the navigational aids were working, you would be able to fly in and because you can’t fly in on that airplane, you wait and wait. Let’s say you have a morning flight and you’ve ‘rostered’ that airplane to do an 8 O’clock into Calabar and back, and after that you do somewhere else and and back. If at 8 O’clock, the weather is bad in Calabar and the aircraft is waiting, it can then become 9, 10, 11 O’clock. It will impact on the whole schedule for the whole day and then the sunset will then meet you at the end of it. So, you will now have to cut your flights because many airports will not allow you to come into the night to catch up on all those flights. So, it’s all a mixture of sunset, runway availability and all of those things I quantified by saying that the lost opportunity is this N4.3 billion per aircraft per year.

In view of this, what do you think the government needs to do ameliorate the challenges facing local carriers?

I said in the presentation that we should make sure that each airport has the right navigational aids for the weather pattern of that airport. Some airports need category one instrument landing and some need category two. It’s not just to install them as we normally do in Nigeria and then say it has been installed in the airport. Is it working? Those things need to be maintained; they need to ensure that they are working so that the airlines can rely on them and operate their flights on schedule. I gave the good example of Calabar. During the harmattan, Calabar is one of the worst-hit airport because every morning is foggy, but we operate normally in Uyo. If we fix the navigational aids, it’ll be very easy to fly into Calabar and out. You wouldn’t need to sit for more than the minimum. These are the simple issues. If we have the navigational aids working, then the runways are available all the time, especially during harmattan when our aircraft visualisation is forced to go down 50 to 60 per cent. We lose forty per cent when we are unable to fly into airports that do not have navigational aids to operate even in low visibility, which is something that is almost standard all over the world. So, those are the things that add up to preventing us from chasing those revenues I was talking about.

Why are foreign airlines not signing agreements with local carriers for the distribution of their passengers within Nigeria?

I don’t know for sure, but what I can tell you is that an airline will enter into an interlining agreement with another as long as that airline can relatively guarantee its schedules. So, you have to have a high level of schedule reliability, a high level of on-time performance so that when, say British Airways, wants to fly from London to Abuja and arrive at 5am, if they’re going to have an interline agreement with somebody to fly their passengers to Enugu and Uyo and all those places, they need to be sure that every time they book and deliver that passenger in Abuja ,you will catch the flight. But when they can’t guarantee that an airline will give them that kind of schedule reliability and on-time performance, then, they won’t take the risk of signing on with them. So, the onus is on our local airlines to establish a level of operational efficiency that others can rely on because interlining requires a level of predictability. I know that British Airways has a flight out of Lagos every midnight. If they enter into an agreement with me, can I deliver my passengers at 8pm. That, in a nutshell, is the difficulty of international airlines having local partners. On the other hand, the local partners are stifled from developing that level of efficiency because there are so many conditions locally that just make it so difficult to achieve the level of operational efficiency that an airline should have. So, effectively, an airline operating with operational efficiency is doing it against the tide. You have to run against the tide, you have very few things helping you, all the time you’re always surmounting obstacles. It’s almost like an obstacle to have schedule reliability and on-time performance. You have to negotiate an obstacle course because everything is an obstacle to that, whereas everywhere else those things just work like clockwork. We need to start removing all the obstacles to efficient operations, some of which I have told you already and there are others too.

In what way is the closure of the domestic runway affecting airlines. As a former FAAN MD, do you think the total closure approach was wrong?

I don’t want to pass a judgment. We have already mitigated that and discussed, so I think it’s in the past now. Our misgivings were expressed. I praise FAAN for responding to the airlines. We reached some good agreements. The consequences of it, though, is rather than just taxi to the domestic runway and depart or land and taxi back into the terminal, you now have to taxi all the way to the International runway and all the way back to domestic in the midst of massive increases in fuel. Of course, in addition to that, the longer taxing burns finish your wheels and your brakes faster than normal because you’re now doing long taxing and up and down, consuming more fuel. The fact that there’s only one runway now in Lagos means that sometimes when it is peak, you have to hold a little longer in order for you to land. So, as you’re waiting, your flights are longer and you’re burning more fuel. At the same time, sometimes when you’re departing, because all the traffic is on one runway, sometimes you wait for 15 minutes, holding for the runway to be available because so many aircrafts are coming. So, all those things have added significantly to the cost of operating out of Lagos, but that’s where we are. Having said all of that, I must praise FAAN for equipping fixing airfield lighting to the domestic runway, which is the best thing to happen to that runway in a really long time. It is a huge benefit to airlines into the future.