It is with utmost dismay, sadness and regret that after our own indigenous Air Peace slashed the air tickets by over 200% on some ticket's fares, there is a tug of war has been unleashed by the majority of foreign air service providers to frustrate and kick Air Peace out of the competition on the very lucrative Lagos London route.
This tug of war ensued because of the lowering of ticket fares by Air Peace. This has led to subsequent lowering of the ticket fares by most of these air companies. Although some of this is attributed to the payment by the Central bank the FX backlog owed to some airline operators gave business confidence back to some of them. There was a sigh of relief for Nigerians and Nigerian travellers. It is a game changer as far as International travelling is concerned for Nigerians.
All of a sudden, other airlines are underpricing, and the plan is to take Air Peace out. If they succeed Nigerians will go back to paying 20 times over
by Allen Onyema
Air Peace has brought joy and happiness to a majority of Nigerians with the price decreasing. There was a mood swing to happiness among Nigerian travellers. We are filled with joy and smiles on hearing Air Peace has successfully landed in London.
Most of these airliners have been cruel to us as Nigerians and cashing big time on us. Can you imagine some tickets to Lagos London being sold at a whopping price of 17 million Naira? Is this not madness and greed? The Minister of Aviation, Mr Festus Keyamo has employed Nigerians to patronise local airlines on international routes.
We as Nigerians need to give our solidarity and not be part of the death to Air Peace business. They have provided us with the much-needed competition, joy and happiness. They need to punish Air Peace for its actions. These are the actions perpetuated by these airline providers.
I believe we were exploited more than enough and Nigerians have been milked during their time of madness of higher ticket sales. It is Air Piece that opened the eyes of Nigerians, that we can get a cheaper deal when it comes to the sale of tickets to Nigerian routes most especially the lucrative Lagos London routes as evidenced below:
When you fly Air Peace from London to Lagos, you are arriving in Lagos Nigeria just +- 6.5 hours flight at most. Unlike other airlines that will take you to their country first before departing to Lagos. Which at times can be over 9 hrs or more in total.
What about the stress of boarding and reboarding, passport and immigration check of the countries you are passing through? Did you take that one into account? Don't be fooled by the cheap tickets being offered now. At the appropriate time, we will all pay back and even pay more for this deceit of lowering ticket fares. To cap it all, it is insane for some people to try and play the ethnic game played by tribalistic bigots referring to the uniform being worn by the flight crews that it only represents a particular tribe in Nigeria. They are quick to forget how unaffordable ticket fares have been brought to a reasonable price. In some of them, their minds of thinking are distorted.
Some people have argued that this is business. To me, this is more than business. It is this way of doing things that has not allowed us to grow our own brands and Economy. When we want to rise there are collaborations to always peg us down by using all instruments of exploitation and monopolistic powers. They seem to want to punish Air Piece and get them out of business on this lucrative and competitive route.
How come all of a sudden that the ticket to Lagos London can be bought cheaper? How come most of these airline ticket providers are now pretending to be nice and generous towards us? Questions need to be asked and answers given! This is the time to give all these companies that have caused us limitless pain and exploited our limited resources in terms of high-ticket sales a bloody nose. Air Peace should be the main winner in all this. We cannot let them down.
My advice to our indigenous Air Peace is to, opt its game by offering good services, being punctual and giving incentives to frequent flyers and attract more customers:
One thing that comes also to mind is the way our marketers and traders treat us Nigerians. Nigerian marketers and traders always amaze me. Oh, the dollar has gone up the reason why prices of commodities are high? Now that the dollar rate is down why are prices of essential commodities still on the high side? They are always finding excuses.
Boarders are closed and importation of some agricultural products is banned to allow our farmers to cultivate and bring about an agricultural revolution. Instead of tapping this opportunity, we have mainly used it to inconvenience ourselves. Nigerian marketers don't push us into corners by taking actions that will affect your business because of your greed and drive for excessive profit margins.
We as consumers can decide to boycott some of your products and let us see how you make the excessive sales and profit margins you are making from us.
Air Peace stood with Nigerians to help break the monopoly of these foreign airlines and to help bring down ticket prices. This is the time Air Peace needs our support not to drive him out of business. Let us Support Air Peace to avoid being bankrupted by the powerful airline monopolist. Am sure he is going to appreciate our solidarity with him at this troubling time for his business. We should not allow him to go under as such fate awaits other indigenous operators. This is the time for us all to rally around, rise and support Air Piece to keep them in business and not collaborate to run them down. If we do not support him, do we have ourselves to blame? These powerful airlines will not stop at anything to achieve this and do anything to bankrupt him.
Watch The Video