United Nigeria Airlines Plans Partnership With Another Domestic Operator

United Airlines Nigeria is looking forward to a relationship in terms of interlining with another unnamed domestic operator in Nigeria. Dr. Obiora Okonkwo, the chairman of the carrier made this known during interactive session in commemoration of the airline’s one year anniversary, with the aviation journalists in Lagos today.

While responding to questions on relationship with airlines as far as expansion plan is concern, Dr. Okonkwo said: “We are open and available to interlining relationship with international airlines. We are also promoting among operators on local interline agreement which is receiving very positive response.”

The last the industry has seen with this type of partnership among domestic operators, is the interlining agreement between Dana Air and Ibom Air which is still going on smoothly till date, to the best of public knowledge.

 

From left: Director Administration, United Nigeria Airlines (UNA), Mr. Linus Awute; Chairman/CEO, UNA, Dr. Obiora Okonkwo and; Chief Operation Officer, UNA, Mazi Osita Okonkwo, during the Press Conference 

He reiterated on working with other airlines when he said, “I do not see any reason why United Nigeria Airline’s passengers cannot be exchanged on Air Peace aircraft, that will cushion effect of delays. United Nigeria is already in discussion with a couple of them and very soon, you will see the result.” 

On expansion plan, he mentioned doubling the current fleet in the next one year. “We intend to increase our fleet and add wider body aircraft. Our plan here is to grow at our own pace. We plan that within the next 12 months, we see ourselves doubling the number of our fleets with larger passenger capacity aircraft. This is because it was our strategic plan to start with smaller body aircraft with 50 passenger capacity to develop and strengthen our operations. Having achieved that, we are now ready to introduce bigger body aircraft as add-ons. Hopefully, we will add two aircraft every quarter till the end of the year. That will give us the opportunity to expand our operations even beyond our borders.” 

 

From left: Manager Training, United Nigeria Airlines (UNA), Mrs. Barbara Dan-Asemh;Director of Flighty Operation, UNA, Captain Chimara Imediegwu; Director Administration, UNA, Mr. Linus Awute; Chairman/CEO, UNA, Dr. Obiora Okonkwo; Chairman, League of Airport and Aviation Correspondent, Mr. Segun Koiki; Chief Operation Officer, UNA, Mazi Osita Okonkwo; Director of Maintenance/ Engineering, Engr. Alex Iheuwa and Manager, Cabin Crews, UNA, Ms. Rounke Babalola

Operations into the West African countries is another plan in the offing. “With the expansion of our fleets comes the extension of our operations into the West Coast region and then, obviously, continental. This also comes with the strengthening of our staff strength and our capacity in the area of human power. These are the things we are going to do because we need strong human resource to be able to deliver decent services within this expansion projections.”

The establishment of a Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility to take care of the fleet is another plan in the pipeline. “Within this growth plan, we also look forward to establishing an MRO in Enugu. We are already in talks with the regulatory authorities and the Enugu state government on this. In fact, the state governor, Rt. Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, has welcomed us with a great enthusiasm and is also working hard to ensure that our plans of establishing the first MRO in the South-East comes to fruition. We can’t wait to see that project off the table.”