Dana Air , one of the leading airlines in the country has stated that it only has partnership with ASKY and that it has nothing to do with Ethiopian Airline.
The Chief Operating Officer of Dana, Mr. Obi Mbanuzor made the clarification yesterday while speaking to journalists at the Murtala Muhammed Airport(MMA),Lagos shortly after its wet-leased early bird Boeing 737-7000 aircraft landed in Lagos from Abuja at about 5:20pm with 118 passengers.
Mbanuzor explained that Dana Air has a lease and interline agreement with ASKY and has no deal whatsoever with Ethiopian Airline, ASKY’s parent airline.
According to him, ” I can tell you we’ve had no discussion with Ethiopian, we had zero discussions with them. Even in terms of the aircraft, this is strictly between Dana Air and ASKY. For now, it’s an aircraft lease agreement and what we are getting in return, we are getting the aircraft, and we are giving the standard economic remuneration for that.”
Explaining further , Mbanuzor stated that the deal act as a buffer for the airline as two of its McDonnell Douglas (MD83) are currently undergoing C-Check in France with one scheduled back at the end of the month.
In his words, “When we announced in February that we are entering partnership with ASKY it involves so many things and the partnership people are already seeing the fruition. The initial partnership has various levels and what you are seeing now is the aircraft leasing aspect of the partnership, where ASKY will provide us with aircraft. You know we have had some operational constraints, currently we have two of our aircraft in France undergoing C-Check, hopefully one will be back before the month end. Part of it is creating aircraft capacity. We are also preparing for fleet augmentation which is also successfully on track.”
He continued, “For this partnership, ASKY is partnering with three(3) Boeing 737-700 aircraft there will initially be three flying at different times, it’s a complex wet lease operation and so they will provide and aircraft and they might take it and put another in the system. There is also a 737-800 as well all being used interchangeably. As time goes on, this partnership will help our staff get acquainted and trained with the 737-700 aircraft type. Without going deep, it is part of what we are looking at in furtherance of this partnership.”
