By Chidi Onyemaizu
Come on board. It is a Boeing 737 and it is on the fleet of Cally Air, Cross River’s newly birthed Airline.
Boeing 737 is a beautiful huge bird in the sky, a wonder in aero- engineering. Its breathtaking design gives fillip to the moniker: If it is not Boeing, I’m not going.
The interior is magnificent. It comes with a residential feeling, with relaxing colours and restful seats.
The floor offers a friendlier atmosphere and comfortable environment.
Indeed, Cally Air is the latest in Governor Ben Ayade’s relentless effort to recalibrate Cross River’s economy. The Airline is primed to play a huge role in broadening the frontiers of an economy that was before now wholly tied to paltry monthly federal allocation.
Cally Air can indeed recreate in Cross River, Ethiopian and Emirate Airlines’ flowery stories.
Essentially, with its multiple indirect, direct and auxiliary jobs creation propensity, the Aviation business is an economic enabler. Ask the Ethiopian Airline, ask United Arab Emirate’s (UAE) Emirate Air.
Certainly, Cally Air can replicate in Cross River what Ethiopian and Emirates Airlines have done to the Ethiopian and UAE economies respectively.
The beneficiaries of the direct jobs (e.g pilots, flight attendants, maintenance Engineers etc) and indirect jobs( e.g caterers, airport attendants, tourism and hotel operators, taxi operators etc) that Cally Air will create are Cross Riverians. This will in turn boost the economy of the state.
Notedly, there are different ways of measuring air transport’s impact on an economy.
A look at these variables reassures one of Cally Air’s enchanting prospect:
*The jobs and spending generated by airlines and their supply chain, the flows of trade, tourism and investment resulting from users of airlines serving the country or city, and the city pair connections that make these flows possible.
*The air transport sector facilitates and lubricates such auxiliary jobs as airport operators, airport on-site enterprises e.g restaurants, retail, taxi services etc.
The Ethiopian economy, for example, has benefited immensely from Ethiopian airline. The Airline indirectly employs about 19,000 people.
In addition, by buying goods and services from local suppliers the airline supports another 179,000 jobs. In all these, the airline is estimated to support a further 80,000 jobs through the wages it pays its employees, some or all of which are subsequently spent on consumer goods and services.
Foreign tourists arriving by air to Ethiopia, who spend their money in the local economy, are estimated to support an additional 815,000 jobs.
In total, 1.1 million jobs are supported by air transport and tourists arriving by air.
In the case of Emirate Airline, in 20 years, it has attracted to UAE GDP, the sum of $128 billion, according to International Air Transport Association, IATA.
This is in addition to supporting nearly 800,000 jobs.
Accordig to former British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, “Success is the child of audacity”. This finds amity with Governor Ayade and the birthing of Cally Air.
Creating an enduring economy requires big dreams and crystallization of such dreams can only be a function of the will power to aim higher than one’s carrying capacity. Ayade sums it up: “I rather aim high and miss than aim low and hit…we are only as big as our imagination, if we can dream it, then we can achieve it”.
His audacity to dream big and the grit resolve to bring to reality such seemingly tall dreams best explains the crystalization of Cally Air.
How could Cross River, stripped of its 76 oil wells, stifled by suffocating debt profile and left body and soul with a sagging revenue allocation pull such feat as floating an airline even when buoyant states fear to thread that slippery path?
As confounding as this jigsaw may be, the answer can be gleaned from Ayade’s resolve against insistent self- doubt and crushing self pity thus validating Robert Goddard’s assertion that “it is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and reality of tomorrow.”
Yes, Cross River’s meagre monthly allocation is hardly enough to pay salaries and pensions much less acquiring Boeing Aircrafts but people need to remember that the state is under the superintendence of a thinking head who continually thinks out of the box.
Rather than whine and gnash teeth over the state’s unsettling cyclone of twisting financial agony, Ayade has used intellectualism to find a way around Cross River’s lack.
And so, in the absence of physical cash, he has devised means of employing intellectual money to fill the void.
Intellectual money simply implies using intellect to get things done without necessarily applying liquid cash. This was how Cally Air came about.
With Cally Air and the avalanche of industries built by the Ayade administration in the last six years contributing their quotas to deepen the economy of the state through job creation and revenue generation, the governor’s vision of Cross River of tomorrow has ultimately berthed on the shores of reality.
Cross River of tomorrow is Cross River with a solid economic base, one that holds prosperity agenda for the future of its people, especially the youth.
Cally Air has in its fleet Boeing 737 aircraft with the capacity for about 150 passengers per flight and superbly managed by Aero Contractors, West Africa’s over 60-year-old Aviation Company with solid experience in aviation services.
And so, in bringing this noble dream to berth on the shores of reality, Ayade has once again proved that he is visionary and goal-oriented.
• Onyemaizu is Senior Special Assistant on Print Media to Governor Ayade