In 2022, flyers in Nigeria will experience the benefits of the newly formed Spring Alliance for domestic flights formed by six airlines that came together to offer passengers more flexibility in case of issues with any one airline.
Dubbed as the Spring Alliance, the project launches out of Lagos, with the founding member carriers including: Azman Air, United Nigeria Airlines, Arik, Air Peace, Aero Contractors, and Max Air.
The ‘Fourth Alliance’
Now three global alliances have dominated the aviation world for decades and it will be interesting to see the fourth Alliance from Nigeria.
Etihad Airways led a ‘fourth alliance’ of broken airlines that the carrier had invested in like Alitalia, Air Berlin and Air Seychelles among others. That didn’t work out because buying stakes in several money-losing carriers just meant a share in in all their losses.
As we have seen, an airline alliance lets an airline in one region extend its reach, and leads customers of one airline to choose an allied competitor over other airlines in that competitor’s region.
But here we have more than one alliance member in a country, and no other airlines outside of the country, so it’ll be interesting to see how this new strategic cooperation will fair on.
Perhaps the most important aspect of an alliance is the centralization of customer relations. Flying multiple airlines with multiple codes can cause a major headache if something goes wrong in the middle of your journey—especially when the airlines don’t communicate with one another.
Alliances enable airlines to communicate and operate with centralized customer relations such that when things go wrong, one airline’s customer relations can adjust, fix, rebook or otherwise repair the itinerary with minimal hassle.
