Nahimah Ajikanle Nurudeen
Aero Contractors Airline, which is under management of Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) has sacked about 900 workers representing 60 per cent of its workforce.
The Media Consultant to the airline, Simon Tumba, who confirmed the development in a statement issued on Thursday in Lagos, said that letters of redundancy has been issued to affected workers during the weekend and would be paid their pension and gratuity.
Tumba said the airline had been grappling with huge and unrealistic personnel cost as well as other operational challenges, worsened by lack of enough aircraft to keep all the workers meaningfully engaged.
“The issuance of notification of redundancy is a business decision that will ensure Aero’s survival.The current situation where over a thousand people are basically not engaged due to lack of serviceable aircraft is not sustainable for the airline,” he said.
Tumba said the airline had been grappling with huge and unrealistic personnel cost as well as other operational challenges, worsened by lack of enough aircraft to keep all the workers meaningfully engaged.
“The issuance of notification of redundancy is a business decision that will ensure Aero’s survival.“The current situation where over a thousand people are basically not engaged due to lack of serviceable aircraft is not sustainable for the airline.“The huge monthly salary associated with a bloated workforce will eventually kill the airline, which is not the intention of the current government,” the media consultant said.
According to him, Aero Contractors currently has aircraft-to-employee ratio of 1:500, which analysts believe is perhaps the worst in the history of global airline industry.
Tumba said government’s intervention in Aero was to save it from total collapse, adding that steps such as this (issuance of redundancy letters) to ensure its survival must be put into effect to save the airline.
”This decision will immediately reduce the whopping operational cost, which has been stifling Aero; enable the management bring in more aircraft through savings from overheads and pay for C-checks,” Tumba said.
He added that the lay- off the workers would enable airline have a more manageable and committed workforce in line with international best practices of 50 to 60 personnel to one aircraft unlike what obtains in Aero at the moment.”
He, however, added that those in Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) and other essential staff in critical departments would not be affected.
Tumba said the Chief Executive Officer of Aero, Captain Ado Sanusi, had assured the workers that they stand a chance of being recalled as soon as the airline increases the number of aircraft in its fleet in the near future.
Aero last September about 1,500 workers on its payroll before it suspended flights after AMCON took over the airline in 2013.
Aero Contractors was founded in 1959 and officially registered in Nigeria in 1960. At that time, it was a wholly owned by Schreiner Airways B.V. of the Netherlands.
It became a company with initially 40 per cent Nigerian holding in 1973 and subsequently 60% in 1976, anticipating the requirements of the Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree of 1977, also known as the indigenisation decree.
In January 2004, Schreiner Airways was bought by CHC Helicopter (CHC), which acquired a 40% holding in Aero, while the 60% majority share remained within the Ibru family.
On 1 July 2010, CHC sold its interests in Aero for the consideration of 1 Nigerian naira, when Aero became wholly owned by the Ibru family.
In March 2013, industrial action grounded flights for 18 days, in a dispute over outsourcing and reduction in staff numbers. The strike, from 13–28 March, grounded Aero’s active fleet of nine aircraft, and was reported to have cost the airline at least N10bn in ticket sales
After financial intervention, the AMCON, an arm of the Federal Government of Nigeria, held 60 per cent of Aero, and in August 2013 AMCON took over the management of the carrier. Hugh Fraser was named as CEO then.
The current CEO Sanusi, who himself replaced Captain Fola Akinkuotu, now managing director of Nigerian Airspace Management Agency(NAIM).
