By Uche Amunike
Aero Contractors, Monday, announced the suspension of it’s scheduled passenger flight operations which is expedient due to the impact of what it termed ‘the challenging operating environment’ on the airline’s daily operations.
According to a statement released by the management, the suspension will take effect on Wednesday.
It partly read: ‘This does not in any way affect the Maintenance activities of the Approved Maintenance Organization (AMO) otherwise known as AeroMRO, the Approved Training Organization (ATO) also known as Aero Training School, the Helicopter and Charter Services operations’.
While acknowledging the inconvenience that will be brought about by this move, the airline apologized to her teeming customers, while promising to restore service as soon as possible.
In recent times, airlines in Nigeria have battled various challenges as a result of the hike in the price of Aviation fuel and other logistics. The major challenges which made airlines to threaten that they will shut down operations and interventions by the government have still remained in place, thereby leading to The latest announcement by Aero Contractors.
While they made emphasis on the suspension of passenger operations in their statement, the management acknowledged that it was a tough decision to make.
Hear them: This decision was carefully considered and taken due to the fact that most of our aircraft are currently undergoing Maintenance, resulting in our inability to offer a seamless and efficient service to our esteemed customers.’
‘We are working to bring these aircraft back to service in the next few weeks, so we can continue to offer our passengers the safe, efficient, and reliable services that Aero Contractors is known for, which is the hallmark of Aero Contractors Company of Nig. Ltd.’
‘The past few months have been very challenging for the aviation industry and the airline operators in particular. With the high cost of maintenance, skyrocketing fuel prices, inflation, and forex scarcity resulting in high foreign exchange rates; these are amongst the major components of airline operations.’
They went ahead to give their assurances about resuming operations in the nearest future.
Hear them: ‘In the meantime, we are working assiduously to return to service as quickly as possible, and do assure our esteemed customers and stakeholders of our determination, that our short absence will not create any major void in the market, as we are coordinating with our business partners to ensure minimum discomfort to ticket holders.’
‘As members of Spring Alliance (a commercial alliance with member airlines providing mutual support in the area of operations), we are liaising with our partner airlines to minimize the impact on our esteemed customers. Our customer service team will be working to help affected esteemed customers reach their destinations’.
