Stakeholders in Nigeria's Aviation Industry, have called for regula­tion to compel existing airlines to merge and seek listing for bigger capitalization from the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).

According to them, these moves will ease awa the threat of an m­minent collapse of the nation’s aviation industry.

At a press conference held in Lagos recently, stakeholders including travel agencies and airlines workers stressed that they are in dire strait and cur­rently finding it hard to remain profitable, not necessarily due to old challenges like exurbi­tant cost of fuel and aircraft maintenance abroad, but from fresh threat by foreign airlines operating multiple route desig­nated to them by the Ministry of Aviation.

One operator present at the meeting,said: “multiple route allocation to foreign airlines is corruption perpetrated by officials of the aviation ministry who col­lude with the foreign airlines to breach global laws for their selfish interests. We have to stop it now.”

“There is a problem that needs to be speedily corrected to allow domestic airlines cre­ate their own market and thrive and that is the problem of the multiple designation to land at various international airports given to foreign airlines,” said Captain Dele Ore at a press conference over the weekend.

“We are weakening our domestic carrier as foreign airlines are running them out of business. The government must address this issue or do­mestic airlines will die because they won’t get money and won’t be able to create jobs,” said Ore, a former Director of Flight Operations at the de­funct Nigerian Airways.

President of the Association of Nigerian Travel Agencies, ANTA, Aminu Agoha, who lamented the fate of local carriers pointed out that Aero Contractors, which used to do interline with one of the major foreign airlines by picking up passengers for them to and fro the Lagos and Port Harcourt airports and making money out of the deal had the contract terminated when the airline was licenced recently to commence direct flight into the Port Harcourt International Airport.