It is time for the Cross River State government to cash in on its unique location as the gateway to east and central Africa

Ayo Akinfe

[1] Cally Air , the state-own airline should be boosted into Nigeria's main domestic operator

[2] Cally Air's headquarters should be in Calabar, designated as the country's avviation hub but it will also have an office in Obudu, where there will be a landing strip specifically built to cater for tourists and visitors to the Obudu Cattle Ranch

[3] In the first year of Cally's Air's operation, planes should fly to and from Calabar to Abuja, Lagos and Kano. There should be one flight a day to each destination. There should also be one daily flight to and from Obodu to Lagos and Abuja for tourists

[4] Given the unique location of Calabar and the way it serves as Nigeria's link to Central and East Africa, the plan should be to make it a regional hub by 2023. By January 1 2023, we want to have daily flights to destinations including Yaoundé, Libreville, Luanda, Kinshasa, Brazzaville, Malabo, Sao Tome and N'djamena

[5] More importantly, however, if we want to build Calabar into a genuinely regional hub like say Cairo, Addis Ababa or Johannesburg, we need to make the airport a maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) depot. There is not one MRO depot in Nigeria today, which is why when foreign aircrafts land, they fly back to their destinations immediately. If we want to attract airlines to Calabar, the airport needs to become an MRO hub, so the airlines can park and maintain their aircraft there

[6] Plans should include runway expansion so the airport can take aircrafts such as the Airbus A380, schedules to other cities.

[7] Also a rail link should be built between Calabar and Obudu and major local hotel construction undertaken

[8] Uyo Airport only generates about N30m ($77,300) a month, which for me makes it unviable. Calabar should be able to generate at least N50m within the first month of operations. Thanks to facilities like the Tinapa Resort and the Obudu Cattle Ranch, this can easily be done

[9] This should at least quadruple once we get an MRO status and multiply by ten-fold once international flights start. The state government should launch a campaign around the slogan - Calabar: The African Bosporus

[10] By 2025, plans should be to make Cally Air's a genuine international airline that flies to Europe, North America and Asia. This may mean merging with other local airlines such as Air Peace, Ibom Air and Overland Airways. However, given that Air Cally will be the biggest and most profitable of all of them, it will be in the driving seat. Over the long term, we have to think of building Cally Air's into a global brand that will rival the likes of Emirates, Virgin Atlantic, BA, Lufthansa, etc.