United Nigeria plans establishing MRO in Enugu
United Nigeria Airlines on Wednesday says it is in talks with regulatory authorities to establish an Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul of aircraft in Enugu State.
The airline’s Chairman Dr Obiora Okonkwo, made this known during a media briefing with the League of Aviation and Airports Correspondents (LAAC) in Lagos to mark the airline one year anniversary of its operations.
Okonkwo said establishing MRO would further reduce capital flight and the cost of aircraft maintenance experience by the airlines in the country.
The chairman said Gov. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State had welcomed the idea with a great enthusiasm and was also working hard to ensure that its plans of establishing the first MRO in the SouthEast comes to fruition.
He said: “The choice of Enugu for our MRO is strategic. Enugu is the heart of the SouthEast region and that is also the home of United Nigeria Airlines.
“In fact, in the next few weeks, many of our operations staff, who ought to work from the headquarters, will commence relocation to Enugu.
“That also solidifies our presence in the state and pushes us closer to achieving our target of setting up an MRO. We are in talks with critical partners for the construction and operationalization of the project.
“I am also excited about the project because of the jobs that would be created though it and the specialisation it would engender.
“So, all of us at United Nigeria Airlines are eagerly looking forward to the foundation laying ceremony for the construction of our MRO in Enugu. I guess you all will be available to witness it when that becomes a reality.”
Okonkwo said in commemoration of its one year anniversary the airline was presently in the process of expanding its domestic operations to reach, in the next few weeks, Benin, Kano, Jigawa and Yola.
The chairman said those were part of its immediate expansion programme as it worked to ensure that none of its aircraft remained on ground, adding that they belong to the skies and that was where they must be.
He noted that the airline’s vision was to satisfactorily serve the public and become noted for on-time departure which should be its signature.
Okonkwo said even though there were constrains such as, natural, technical and human that affect on-time departure, adding that it cannot take adequate control of the natural factors, it would do its best to keep the technical and human reasons under check.
The chairman said the airline would soon be facing NorthEast and NorthWest, saying that it was already in an agreement and had understanding to start a shuttle service within the entire six states in the NorthEast.
He said in a nutshell, it had been an exciting 12 months of learning and improving as it had learnt a lot from its operations and were poised to do even better with our growth plan.
“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 aircrafts as add-ons.
“Hopefully, we will add two aircrafts every quarter till the end of the year. That will give us the opportunity to expand our operations even beyond our borders,” the chairman said.
He said with the expansion of its fleets comes the extension of its operations into the West Coast region and then, obviously, continental.
The airline’s boss said this would also comes with the strengthening of its staff strength and capacity in the area of human power.
He said those were the things the airline would do because it need strong human resource to be able to deliver decent services within this expansion projections.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the airline commence inaugural commercial flights to Enugu and Lagos from Abuja on Feb. 12, 2021
The airline had expanded its operations to reach Owerri, Port Harcourt, Asaba, Yenagoa and lately, Osubi in Warri and Anambra airports.
