New United Nigeria set for aviation debut in Q4 with Embraer ERJ-145 jets
A new airline, United Nigeria maybe commencing domestic flight operations in the aviation industry in the fourth quarter of the year. The airline said to belong to billionaire Dr. Obiorah Okonkwo, will be operating 4 Embraer ERJ-145 jets connecting major cities in Nigeria.
According to airway1.com, the initiative, however, has few known details. On the website, the company claims to be 100% Nigerian and founded in 1990. Among the destinations to be offered are the capital Lagos and the cities of Abuja, Port-Harcourt, Asaba, Owerri and Enugu.
The only information about the fleet is an image showing four ERJ-145 jets with the airline’s livery. One of the planes has registration N12567 and was operated by Aerovision International, from the US until a year ago when it was stored in Mexico. The aircraft was originally delivered to ExpressJet Airlines in 2002 and which operated it with Continental paint, currently United Airlines.
According to the local press, United Nigeria belongs to billionaire Dr Obiorah Okonkwo, who owns an event center in Abuja and who appears in photos next to one of Embraer’s jets. Expanding marketUnited Nigeria is not an isolated initiative in the country. Commercial aviation has received significant investments in recent years as today only 5% of Nigerians use air transport.
The country’s largest airline, Air Peace, has only 25 planes, of which seven ERJ-145s. The company recently announced an order for four new generation E195-E2 jets also from Embraer. The most ambitious Nigerian project, however, is Green Africa Airways, which earlier this year signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Airbus for the acquisition of 50 A220-300 after canceling a similar order for 737 MAX with Boeing.
The Lagos-based company is owned by Babawande Afolabi, but until recently it was still awaiting the operation certificate from the government of Nigeria. Until August, the order for 50 planes had not yet been made official by Airbus.
