nearly 1 a.m., and a long queue of Nigerians were waiting patiently in the corridor of one of the city’s best hotels. Fortunately I was able to jump the queue, as government advisers whisked me to his top-floor suite.
He put his hand on my shoulder and said: ‘I like you, Richard.’
‘Thanks, Mr President,’ I said, rather bowled over by such a welcome. ‘Erm, what is it about me that you like?’
‘I like the fact that you never wear a tie. I hate those stuffy English gentlemen with their ties.’
Our talks went extremely well and I was able to say that he could be assured of Virgin’s commitment to his country. We shook hands on the deal, and the next day we launched a new airline for Africa.
I knew the president admired our flagship, Virgin Atlantic. Though launched as a cut-price airline, its success was also based on giving the business traveller the best customer service in the world. We’d offered our business travellers what first-class passengers on other airlines didn’t get. We had pioneered comfortable reclining seats, flat beds, lounges with hairstylists and masseuses, and a motorcycle and limo home-pickup service.
In economy, Virgin Atlantic was the first to provide personal video screens in every seat-back, so that the traveller could choose the films and television shows he or she wanted to watch.
Nigerian Airways had been the nation’s flag carrier from 1965 until 2002, but it had been overrun with bureaucracy and riddled with corruption. During the summer of 2004, the Nigerian federal government proposed a new flag carrier as part of its privatisation process. They wanted Virgin’s support. On Tuesday 28 September 2004 — the same week we were making an announcement about Virgin Galactic — I flew from London to Abuja to join President Obasanjo once again and the Minister of Aviation, Mallan Isa Yuguda, to sign a Memorandum of Mutual Understanding, which formally established Virgin Nigeria as a new flag carrier.
The airline was created with a $50 million investment, the shares split between the Nigerian investors, with 51 per cent, and Virgin Atlantic, with 49 per cent. The aim was to widen the offering in time on the Nigerian stock exchange. It was set in stone that the home base would be Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) in Lagos, flying to London, Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt, then to Abidjan, Accra and Dakar. Although we’d be a minority partner in this new airline, I wanted us to bring all our expertise to help our Nigerian partners create the best airline, not just in Africa — but in the world.
We brought in Simon Harford, who had worked with Barbara Cassani on setting up British Airways’ low-cost airline, Go, to be the CEO, and he set about his task with alacrity. He signed up KPMG and Philips Consulting to handle recruitment — a key area for us. We were swamped with applications — nearly 25,000 wanted to join the airline.
Virgin Nigeria was to be built from scratch: a modern airline with excellent service. We believed the business would create several thousand jobs within five years and, indirectly, a further 200,000 jobs.
We set about building a best-in-class terminal for Virgin Nigeria at MMIA, and commissioned EDS to deliver us an integrated airline reservations, ticketing and baggage system that was as good as anything else in the world. We signed a deal to lease the first of our Airbus A320s, with sixteen business-class seats, for the domestic routes.
Meanwhile, Simon and his team were working to finalise approvals from the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority. On 13 June 2005, tickets went on sale — via phone, travel agents and the Internet — for our inaugural flight from Lagos to London Heathrow, arriving at Terminal 3. The tickets were sold out within a few days. We aimed to fly weekly at first and then three times a week operating an Airbus A340-300, with 187 economy, 28 premium economy and 40 business-class seats.
Our maiden flight left Lagos for London on Tuesday 28 June. The aviation minister, Isa Yaguda, presented the first group of trained cabin crew with their ‘wings to fly’.
In the following days the domestic services would be launched too. The initial feedback was tremendous. One regular flyer, Dan Ekpe, said the sight of Virgin Nigeria’s aircraft on the tarmac in London had filled him with ‘a sense of pride’ that a Nigerian carrier was now doing a great job.
In the first ten months, we flew 500,000 passengers on our six planes, two Airbus 340-300s, an A320-200 and three Boeing 737-300s.
On 11 July 2005, President Obasanjo sent Virgin a note to thank us for our commitment: ‘I believe that your role in the aviation sector will bring innovation, competition, new technology and, of course, a lot of satisfaction to the Nigerian public.’
He then went on to remind me that there was a need to ‘Nigerianise’ the staff at all levels in order to anchor the future of the airline on indigenous capacity from management through to technical and cabin crew. ‘I know that you have put a quality training facility and programme in place. It is my expectation that you will use these facilities to train Nigerians in all critical areas of airline management and operations.’
We did indeed. We put a lot of time and effort into training and recruiting staff for the airline. We set up a technical partnership with the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology to train new pilots who would then be sent away to get experience on short-haul airlines. We also set up apprenticeships, and offered automatic employment to those trainee engineers who successfully completed their courses.
Within the first year we were able to expand services to Dubai, as well as increasing the internal domestic routes from Lagos to Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kano, as well as Lagos to Johannesburg.
In November, having taken the airline through its momentous launch — a remarkable job in such a short time — Simon Harford decided it was time for someone else to take the reins; he announced that he was moving on. His job was taken up by Conrad Clifford, who had come with me and Simon on my first trip to Nigeria in 1996. It was a challenging time to be taking over, but Conrad, who had set up Virgin Atlantic’s operations in Nigeria, was ready to take the airline to its next stage of expansion.
However, I can’t deny that I had some concerns about the way things were going.
For the existing Nigerian airlines there were serious problems. One was bankrupt, and while it had enough cash to cover the cost of crews, landing and navigational fees, fuel and insurance, there was no money left for reinvestment and maintenance. Another had only one serviceable plane. The remainder of its fleet was grounded because they could not fund maintenance. This was a simply atrocious situation.
The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria still required a lot of help to make things work more smoothly. The feedback I received told me that outside Virgin Nigeria, things were being very badly run. It was going to take time to create a superb new airline in Africa. Our competitors in Nigeria still had planes falling out of the sky and customers plummeting to their deaths.
On 22 October 2005, a 25-year-old Bellview Airlines Boeing 737 took off from Lagos with six crew and 111 passengers on board. After passing through 13,000 feet, the plane stalled, tipped and nosedived into the ground. Although the aircraft came down nineteen miles north of Lagos, it took the rescue teams nine hours to locate the wreckage. The plane had an old search-and-rescue system which hampered search efforts.
On 10 December, a Sosoliso Airlines DC10 from Abuja crashed on landing at Port Harcourt, killing 109 people. Among those who died were seventy-one students of Loyola Jesuit College in Abuja who were returning home for their Christmas holiday.
A few months later, again at Port Harcourt, an Air France jet was badly damaged after crashing into a herd of cows. Thankfully, this time, no one was hurt.
Then, on 18 September 2006, a Dornier 228 military plane crashed killing fourteen officers, including ten generals. In another Nigerian crash, a number of senior politicians were killed.
Delivering the Virgin brand in Africa is important — it must stand for the same values as in other parts of the world: integrity, safety and a commitment to customer service. Maintaining the highest standards of safety is something that can never be compromised, and over the years several international transportation groups have been forced to pull out of Africa because the cut-throat local competition chooses to ignore the regulations.
Working in the Nigerian marketplace was becoming increasingly tough. I and my team in Virgin Nigeria were growing increasingly frustrated. We were striving so hard to build a safe, high-quality airline, but we found ourselves thwarted at every turn. We were incurring all the costs of putting together a quality operation from scratch, but in a market that put safety and quality last. We were, in the end, just an airline: we couldn’t hope single-handedly to transform the industry’s entire infrastructure. We needed help.
I appealed to the president to ensure that companies that were not prepared to operate to the correct standards or who cut corners were dealt with rapidly. If necessary, he should take steps to remove their Air Operator’s Certificates. It was simple: unworthy aircraft should be fixed — or scrapped.
Not long after, a directive arrived, forcibly ejecting Virgin Nigeria from its operational base at Lagos Terminal
