Arik Air aims to develop airline connectivity hub in Ghana
West Africa’s largest private airline company, by number of passengers, aircraft and revenue, Arik Air of Nigeria is seeing the lack of a national airline in Ghana as an opportunity to develop its market in the sub-region.
The airline says it intends to develop the airline market in Ghana to serve as a connectivity hub to Europe, the US and other West African countries.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with ghanabusinessnews.com at the airline’s head offices in Lagos, the Vice President, Planning, Alliances & Marketing at Arik Air, Bert van der Stege, said, the airline believes there is demand for air transport in Africa.
“Everybody seems to focus on Accra, but in the next couple of years, I will like to do things together with the government to develop other routes to and from Ghana,” he said.
Mr. van der Stege said the airline intends to provide links between Ghana and Nigeria, the two English speaking countries surrounded by Francophone neighbours.
“There is a big project here, we want to change Arik Air in a way that we can provide connectivity from Accra to Lagos so passengers can change planes to New York, London, Johannesburg and cities in Eastern Africa. By doing so, we provide opportunities for the people of Ghana to increase air services and not just make the country dependent on European airlines for example,” he said.
He argues: “There should be no reason why you have to travel via Europe, whether it is Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam or any other hub if you can also change plane to let’s say, New York, on this continent. It is just a 40-minute flight from Accra to Lagos and we provide a very fast connection and in one-hour late you are in the Arik Air flight to New York and you will be in New York a lot earlier.”
He also said Arik Air wants to develop flight connectivity within Africa. “It is more difficult in Africa to visit neighbouring countries, than to visit London or Paris and that’s where we believe is the place for us. We can provide the connections to neighbouring countries,” he said.
“I am however, not very happy with everything we do, we have to improve in many areas,” he said.
“We have to work on our schedule, to make sure we are always on time. But that is not easy in this country (Nigeria), there is always fuel scarcity, the air space is always congested and our pilots are often asked to wait for sometime before they can land. We are however, always working on improving on-board services and we will be employing more pilots,” he said.
By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi