Arik Air gets $4.7 million injection from AMCON

Arik Air has received an injection of NGN1.5 billion (USD4.7 million) from the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) since being taken over by the state-owned body, reports ch-aviation.
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AMCON took over management of the airline in February this year, after concerns that the business was failing. CEO Roy Ilegbodu said that when AMCON took over, it had paid out between NGN60 - 75 million (USD188,000 - 236,000) in customer refunds per week.

Ilegbodu was full of praise for AMCON's role, and was critical of Arik Air's previous management. The new management team has been working on appeasing creditors and paying outstanding staff salaries. Ilegbodu added that it had been troubling to discover just how few operational aircraft the airline had.

"It was quite interesting and disturbing for an airline with 30 airplanes on its books with only 10 functional," Ilegbodu said.

Arik Air has scaled back its international operations in a bid to reduce operating costs, and Ilegbodu said that they were in no hurry to scale back up. He said they would wait until the situation with creditors was normalised and a KPMG audit had been completed.

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