VENTURES AFRICA  – Arik Air, West Africa’s largest carrier,  in conjunction with Lufthansa Technik plans to establish an international Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility that would attract businesses from different parts of the world.

As disclosed by the Arik’s Chairman, Joseph Arumemi Ikhide, at the airline’s 6th year celebration, when completed, the MRO will be one of Lufthansa Technik’s major business outside Hamburg, Germany.

According to the Arik boss, the airline would be built in Nigeria to meet international standards, including that of the International Aviation Safety Assessment Program (IASA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United States.

“The MRO we are setting up with Lufthansa is global. It is not strictly for Arik alone. I just want to make that one very clear. Lufthansa sent us to Malta; the base of Lufthansa is Hamburg, but they have this type of facility they want to build for us in Malta; they have in Budapest; they have in Asia.

“What we made very clear to Lufthansa is that we want an MRO that will be global. Someone can come from Philippines, some can come from France, but one problem that we have, which I don’t know, except government takes a very strong step; we are looking for NGs, Next Generation aircraft. We are thinking about the A330s; we are not thinking about B737=200. We won’t maintain all that, but we may maintain B737=400,” Arumemi Ikhide said.

The MRO which will be built to carry out overall maintenance of New Generation aircraft will save Nigeria aviation companies lots of money as Nigeria aviation spend millions of Dollars every year to repair their aircraft overseas.

The airline chairman also revealed that the facility is largely dependent on the support of government and the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) while Lufthansa gave conditions that must be met by the Federal Government of Nigeria before the facility would be established.

“Lufthansa set some conditions, which they feel the government must abide by. We have to work with NCAA and they have to keep it to IASA standards and FAA standards. So it is going to benefit the whole country. Arik itself will be a customer of that MRO so there is going to be a difference between Arik airline and the MRO.”

He said the project could be established from next year if all the conditions given by Lufthansa were met.

“And then of course they are going to train Nigerians. There are international standards for all these things. I think we and NCAA will have to work hand in hand. We need government input and government approvals for it. It is better for all of us to key to it and educate the public. The MRO is a very important thing to our heart,” he added.

In a related development, the airline recently secure a credit facility amounting to $2 billion (361 billion naira) from international financiers to acquire new aircraft, including the Boeing B787 Dreamliner

“They said that they wanted their money within seven years and Union Bank was to refinance it, which we all agree and we filled the form. Of course banking reform came and the new management in Union Bank came and said they don’t want it and that was how they drove us to AMCON. So all these saying that we owe debts everywhere is just out of ignorance.”

“We too have engaged the services of Lloyd and Associate and they are looking at the value of Arik as we speak. We took Lloyd and Associate because of their experience and they are valuing Arik, our network, everything. When they come and bring the report then we now go down to the stock market and divest some percentage to the public. So there is no intention of somebody holding the company. If you hold it, life is very short…,” he added.

Arik Air,  Nigeria’s biggest airline, is a member of the International Air Transport Association, IATA.  It was established on 30 October 2006,  the airline began operation with four daily flights between Lagos and Abuja, using three brand new Bombardier CRJ900 aircraft; today with its 23 aircraft, the airline controls 65 percent of the domestic traffic. It has carried over 10.2 million passengers in its six years of operation.