By Hillary Obayangbon, Foreign Correspondent
Chief Executive Office, CEO, of Air Peace Airline, Allen Onyema has called for federal government’s intervention to save Nigerians from the conspiracy of foreign airlines to harshly raise airfares for Lagos-London route and ostensibly force him out of business.
Onyema made the call yesterday in an interview on Channels TV programme, Politics Today.
He alleged that soon after Air Peace started the Lagos London route, foreign airlines conspired to slash fares below their break-even points aiming to force Air Peace from the Lagos London route and monopolise the market.
He warned against the danger of the conspiracy saying should the conspiracy succeed the foreign airlines will revert to higher airfares that would frustrate Nigerians when competition has been eroded.
Hitherto, the foreign airlines charged between N15 to N17 million for business class, N6 million for premium economy and N5 million for economy.
But coming on board, Air Peace charged N4.5million for business class, and economy class N1.2million.
In response, the foreign airlines crashed their airfares from N18 million to N5 million without reflexive impact of dollar change.
Onyema therefore called on the federal to assist Air Peace by reducing its operational charges so as to provide the airline a better opportunity to compete against the foreign airlines that are backed by their governments.
” The moment they succeed in taking Aor Peace out, Nicerians would pay 20 times their forler charges.” Onyema warned.