Dana Air at the weekend concluded re-certification by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), days after the commencement of the exercise.
The airline has also promised to acquire more aircrafts to beef up its present fleet by 2019, saying this would also enable it increase its flights and cities covered within the country.
The airline had suspended flight operations for a few days following the re-certification exercise.
The airline, in a statement by Mr. Kingsley Ezenwa, its spokesman, said the conclusion of the exercise would enable it to ease the pain of travellers who had had to bear the high cost of tickets as a result of flight shortage across the country.
Ezenwa said that re-certification in Nigeria’s aviation industry was a standard practice conducted every two years by the NCAA and during the period, an airline’s operation was totally reviewed from ground handling to quality assurance and particularly safety standards.
He expressed happiness that the airline was able to scale the rigorous process.
He also lauded NCAA for carrying out a thorough check on its operations before re-certifying the airline, but decried negative reports in the media within the period, saying that they were unnecessary.
He said: “We wish to commend the NCAA for doing a thorough job and for giving us a clean bill of health which on its own reassures our guests that our 10 years experience in Nigeria’s airspace is no fluke.
“We are, however, worried about some orchestrated and baseless stories that were circulated while the exercise lasted. Unfortunately, the sponsors of the story displayed crass ignorance of simple regulatory exercise as a result of their mischievous intentions.
“For the records, Dana Air presently has five aircrafts out of which two are undergoing mandatory maintenance, which in aviation is called C-checks. The safety and comfort of our guests comes first before any other consideration and we find such report really unnecessary.
“We advise the purveyors of such report to rather commend us, having served Nigeria for over 10 years and counting and showing massive commitment to changing the narrative about domestic airlines and Nigeria’s aviation industry as viable.”
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He regretted the pains experienced by air travellers within the period of the re-certification exercise, saying that some of them had to travel by road to their destinations as a result of the shortage of aircraft across the country and hike in fares.
Ezenwa, however, said that discussions were on-going with its financial partners on the acquisition of more airplanes to beef up its operations.
“Our position having gone through the review is to continue to maintain our operational efficiency, which we have come to be known for, and we wish to sincerely apologise to our guests for the slight disruption in flights during the course of our re-certification,” he added.
