Aero Contractors chief warns Nigeria could lose air traffic and MRO jobs to neighbouring hubs
Nigeria's oldest airline has used its 67th anniversary to deliver a blunt message to policymakers: aviation is missing from the country's headline economic plan, and the cost of that omission is already visible along the region's borders.
Speaking in Lagos at the celebration, held under the theme "Going the Extra Mile," Captain Ado Sanusi, Managing Director of Aero Contractors, argued that aviation deserves the same deliberate treatment the government has given roads, rail and power. His keynote posed a direct question to the administration: "Where is Aviation in the Renewed Hope Agenda?" He called for a dedicated "Renewed Hope for Aviation" strand within the national economic programme.
Sanusi's concern is competitive rather than sentimental. He pointed to neighbouring countries building new airport and maintenance infrastructure explicitly designed to capture Nigerian traffic. If Lagos and Abuja do not respond strategically, he warned, Nigerian airports will shed passengers, local hangars will sit idle, and both jobs and investment will migrate across borders. For trade partners across the continent, that is a familiar story: hub competition in Africa is intensifying, and the winners are being decided by infrastructure decisions taken now rather than by historic market size.
He did credit the government where progress is evident, singling out the ongoing renovation of Murtala Muhammed International Airport as a genuine transformation of Nigeria's main gateway, and offering Aero as a willing partner in further development.
The airline's own history gave weight to the argument. Aero Contractors began in 1959, flying personnel and equipment to Niger Delta oil fields, having started life as a charter and crop-spraying operation before becoming a central service provider to the oil and gas sector. Scheduled passenger flying followed in 2000, after which the company expanded into rotary-wing operations, maintenance, repair and overhaul, and pilot training. That spread of activity now forms an integrated aviation business rather than a simple airline.
Its most significant technical achievement came in January 2018, when Aero engineers completed Nigeria's first indigenous C-check on a Boeing 737 at the carrier's hangar at Murtala Muhammed Airport. No Nigerian airline had carried out heavy maintenance of that kind domestically for fourteen years, and Sanusi described it as a first across West and Central Africa at the time. The facility now services sister airlines throughout West Africa, a detail that underlines how maintenance capacity has become a regional strategic asset rather than a purely domestic concern.
Sanusi was equally candid about the years that nearly ended the company. There were periods when the entire fleet sat grounded and operations stopped altogether. "We have grounded fleets and empty hangars and still, we flew. We have gone months without a single aircraft in the sky, and still, we flew," he said. Staff went without pay, colleagues were lost, and engineers, pilots, cabin crew and ground teams held the business together through prolonged uncertainty.
The recovery now shows in the numbers. The airline's operating margin moved from minus 134 per cent in 2022 to positive territory by 2025. Sanusi credited much of that survival to the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, which took a majority stake in 2016 when the carrier was in severe financial distress, thanking AMCON for giving the airline "a second chance at life" and commending Receiver/Manager Senator Adeniyi Ayodele Adegbonmire, SAN.
Describing Aero Contractors as a "national treasure," he urged the government to recognise, protect and position the carrier for decades more service, framing the 67-year record as a legacy built by generations of Nigerian pilots, engineers and aviation professionals.
His closing appeal was directed at the whole industry: government, stakeholders and professionals must secure the policy attention and investment Nigeria needs to compete within an African aviation market that is moving quickly. Having weathered several storms already, he said, the airline intends to keep flying.
