Daily Times Nigeria Thursday, November 5, 2015
19 Interview
Devaluation of naira will affect aviation training— Mshelia CAPTAIN IBRAHIM KADAFIR MSHELIA is a pilot and administrator with flying experience spanning more than 32 years. This astute businessman, philanthropist and strategic tinkerer with innovative ideas for stop gaps and long term fixes in the aviation subsector is also a human capacity builder having founded Mish Aviation Flying School in Ghana in 2006. His passion for the growth of the aviation industry is intense and has always insisted on what is standard for the industry. He speaks with CHUKWUEMEKE IWELUNMO on a number of issues including the need for governments in Africa to understand the difference between training institutions and commercial operations in a bid to improve the sector.
As a training institution, what is your perception of Nigeria’s aviation industry? Since the deregulation of the aviation sector several decades ago, the Nigerian aviation industry has evolved into a very huge market. The industry has so much potentials: though one will say it has not been exploited fully to the larger benefit of the country, due to the inability of the industry players to exhibit the honesty, sincerity, ethics and professionalism required. In addition, successive governments have also not been able to successfully check the incessant corruption within the service provider government agencies and the airlines have not been able to appoint honest leaders as workers themselves have failed to stop pilfering company income etc. A lot has gone wrong with little or no effort to right the wrongs over the years. One wonders why major European, American and other carriers in Middle East and Africa are making daily flights, with some doing even two frequencies daily, while the Nigerian aviation industry, on the domestic front is only struggling with no hope in sight for reciprocity. The avoidable challenges are too many for the operators and would be operators to grow or sustain their business favourably due to the abovementioned factors. All these problems lead to low employment for the locals and in effect reduced clientele for the training institutions such as Mish Aviation. To what extent would you say that your institution lived up to 2014? 2014 was a very difficult year especially for us at Mish Aviation because of several factors. The general global economic situation affected several airlines and in effect training. We train for the airline industry and therefore if it is
slow, we get the effect as well. No employment, no training needs. But we have been able to struggle through and kept the hope alive. Target in terms of students’ turnover and what is your target for 2015? In 2015, we expect to hit our capacity target because things have improved slightly in the region especially with change of government in Nigeria where we have our largest clients. More enquiries have come in and things have changed slightly towards the positive. We are not there yet but the hope is great and we are expecting a better yield. There have been calls for more female enrollment in aviation careers. What is the level of female students’ patronage of your institution? We have had a very low turnout from female candidates. Since inception in 2011, we have had only two females train at our institution. One, for just instrument rating (IR) renewal and the other from the scratch (ab-initio). But both of them performed extremely well. We look forward to more females in the coming years. What is the status of your trainer aircraft fleet and how many do you have presently? They are always in fine form as required by airworthiness requirements; we have a policy of maximum of five students sharing one plane at any point in time for the single engine training while one multi engine is made available for the twin conversion and instrument rating check rides. We have two Cessna 172 operational now but we have two more stored to be deployed when we raise our capacity in the very near future. Once we expand capacity, we will re-fleet to meet demand. This is not a problem at all. We are not commercial airline carrying passengers, so we do not justify more performance by lining up more planes. We rate per-
formance on the quality and students’ ability to accomplish this skill training on time and with high performance level which is what we have been achieving at Mish Aviation. We have not had a single failure at check rides (PPL or CPL) with GCAA examiners since inception, and this is a great feat. How has the recurring jet fuel crisis in Nigeria affected your operations and what will you proffer as possible solutions? We do not use Jet fuel, we use Aviation Gasoline (Avgas 100LL). We also have our own depot and purchase our fuel directly from the USA and do not therefore experience fuel problem ever. We bought two ISO tanks of 25,000 litres each and rotate them between the USA and our facility in Accra. The Ghanaian Government has helped us greatly by granting us our own license to import and dispense our own fuel without having to deal with fuel marketers. Being professionals, we time the fuel need and delivery in such a manner that we have a ‘never see dry’ approach. That way we always have fuel at Mish Aviation for our training. The business of training aviation professionals has become increasingly competitive. What is your impression about the growing competition and how do you intend to manage it? We do not see the competition at Mish Aviation; we get our clients as and when we have slots open. There are only three schools doing what we do in the entire sub Saharan Africa and we are the only privately owned flying school among them. You can see from there that bureaucracy of government is eliminated completely. We deliver on time and quality. So we really do not have any competition at all. Plus, we have ‘cut our coat according to
Mshelia
our size’ business ideology, so we are doing just fine by God’s grace. Recently, the Central Bank of Nigeria has been in debate over devaluation of the nation’s currency and the exchange rate of the currency to a dollar has been changing. Do you see this development affecting your business? Certainly it will! Our clients mainly come from Nigeria and this adds up to how much Naira they will need to buy the dollars they remit to us. It has the potential to slow or even kill the training industry. This is one of the problems I highlighted earlier. In Europe and the Americas etc (Developed climes), banks may employ in-house or keep on contract professional aviation consultants in order to advise them on effects of policies before they are pronounced and implemented, but in Nigeria and most African countries, the way we see policies emerge, appears as if those in position deliberately or ignorantly fail to seek professional advice. We need to stop and look back and emulate greater values. Secondly, those who find themselves in governments must realise that training institutions are not airlines and should be treated as all other universities or schools. This has been a mistake that needs to be addressed very quickly if we want our aviation training schools to survive. The only way we can quit dependence on other developed economies for training we can easily do here at home locally ourselves. Our general mentality of going abroad for this or that must stop to make meaningful progress in every
aspect of our national developments across Africa. It hurts me that we are still living the values of the 19th century but in the 21st. It’s very painful indeed. Not when we have Africans at NASA, WALL STREET etc… The level of ignorance on the prospects of aviation careers is still high in Nigeria. Is your institution doing anything on creation of awareness among young people? I will want to differ in this opinion. Rather, the problem is enabling environment to provide training opportunities and absorb the trainees after graduating. I think the level of awareness is fairly greater that one would imagine because it’s a prestigious profession and with Internet now, a lot more people know about aviation. I would rather blame the economy and lack of scholarship as the problem. Also for those who can afford the training, jobs are scarce despite the very many airplanes operating in our airspace, because, the candidate is choosing a particular job thereby denying himself suitable option, overpricing himself to would be employers, or unfriendly economy which encourages wet lease alternative for operator to acquire planes. There are so many Wet leased aircraft operating in Nigeria today that should absorb the serious job seekers, but this is not to be because the Nigerian unemployed pilot may not have the pilot license of the state of registry of that plane and have not got the validation to enable him fly it.