The Nigeria Senate has appealed to airline operators to be lenient with the National Assembly following their threat to stop operations by Friday over the hike in the price of aviation fuel.
Airline operators had on Monday in a meeting with members of the Aviation Committee in the House of Representatives, threatened to stop operations if the cost of Aviation fuel was not urgently brought down to N400 per litre as against N670 it currently sells for.
To this effect, the Senate Committee on Aviation, on Tuesday, had an emergency meeting with airline operators.
At the meeting which had the chairman, the Senate Committee on Aviation, Smart Adeyemi, Chairman of airline operators, Abdulmunaf Sarina, the aggrieved operators reiterated the decision to withdraw their services by Friday if nothing is done to salvage the situation.
Sarina who spoke alongside the chairman, United Nigeria Airline, Dr. Obiora Okonkwo, said they could not cope with the high cost of operations worsened by an increase in the price of aviation fuel.
He noted that the actual price for a ticket of an hour flight is N150,000 but is being subsidised to N50,000 per passenger.
According to him, “We are overburdened by this ticket subsidy and heavily indebted to Banks with consequences of running out of business if required actions are not taken.”
Wadding into the matter, Senator Adeyemi pleaded with the airline operators to give the Senate a few days to interface with the Federal Government and profer a solution to the problem.
