28 June 08

VIRGIN NIGERIA MARKS THIRD YEAR ANNIVERSARY

Lagos Nigeria, 28th June 2008: Virgin Nigeria Airways Limited, Nigeria’s private sector flag carrier is three years, having commenced flight operations with its maiden flight to London Heathrow on June 28, 2005.

Since that inaugural flight in 2005, Virgin Nigeria now flies to 15 destinations spread across international, regional and domestic routes with its entire route network cutting across 7 countries.

Speaking on the airline’s third anniversary, the Chairman, Board of Directors, Mr. Felix Ohiwerei said: “That we are today celebrating the third anniversary of Virgin Nigeria is a fitting tribute to the resolute belief and confidence in the airline by all our stakeholders – the Federal Government, the shareholders, the employees and the goodwill of all our customers, especially Nigerians who have demonstrated commendable patronage of our services in the last three years”

“During this period, we have endeavored to create a new Nigerian airline from the scratch into an internationally accepted organization with competent personnel, strong structure and systems which are the hallmarks of viable institutions”.

Mr. Ohiwerei declared: “The vision and mission of the airline is on course and we will strive to surpass the expectations of our customers in the years ahead as our ultimate objective is to bring convenience to the flying public. We therefore thank all our stakeholders for their immensurable support in the past three years. We will continue to count on their patronage. To God be the glory for how far he has taken us”.
 
Virgin Nigeria currently has a workforce of over 1,200 employees, made up of cabin crew members, pilots, engineers, management staff and crop of other dedicated professionals deployed to various departments of the company.

In the course of its operations, Virgin Nigeria has invested heavily in human capital development, especially in training and retraining of its employees. It recently inaugurated its continuous cadet pilots’ scheme with the first batch of 8 employees sent to Florida, U.S.A for training.

The cadet pilots’ scheme is a yearly and continuous scheme through which Virgin Nigeria will annually train 24 cadet pilots in three batches. The programme offers an avenue to boost the pool of pilots who will bridge the age gap and vacuum created by the dearth of indigenous pilots which will ultimately aid projected growth plans in the years ahead.

Virgin Nigeria has always blazed the trail in introducing innovative packages for passengers’ convenience and comfort. It is the only airline that has a customer loyalty programme known as the eagleflier that rewards passengers with the home advantage, in which case miles earned locally can be redeemed on the international routes or through the loyalty programme partners.

Virgin Nigeria is listed on the IOSA Directory following its successful completion of the intensive IATA Operational Safety Audit which has placed Virgin Nigeria at par with the best airlines in the world, having shown its commitment to airline safety standards.

Virgin Nigeria complies strictly to the Nigerian Civil Aviation Regulations (NCAR). Virgin Nigeria also subscribes to the European Joint Aviation and Regulation Operational Standards (JAR-OPS), as well as continuously submitting its operations to international audits.

The airline has also filed an application for maintenance approval by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) which will allow it to carry out specified maintenance on European registered airplanes in Lagos.

Virgin Nigeria key objective is building a hub at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos to support its operations of seamless travel connections for its customers in the West Africa sub-region.

The airline is highly rated at home and abroad as evident in its emergence as ThisDay airline of the year in 2006 as well as being voted “Airline of the Year 2006” by City People award for excellence.

Also, Virgin Nigeria emerged “Airline of the Year 2007” during the Global Excellence Recognition awards.

In 2007, Virgin Nigeria emerged as one of the runners up in the category of “Best African Carrier” by the Association of South Africa Travel Agents (ASATA) and only recently, it was nominated in the “Best Airline based in Africa” category by the Official Airline Guide (OAG) awards.

Virgin Nigeria has also been nominated in the “Airline of the Year” category of the African Business Awards 2008 scheduled to hold in London next month. It is nominated alongside Kenya Airways, South African Airways, Royal Air Maroc and Afriqiyah Airways.

The nominations for the international awards attest to Virgin Nigeria’s standards in the industry.

Virgin Nigeria has since the commencement of her operations impacted positively on humanity through various corporate social responsibility activities.

In 2006, Virgin Nigeria partnered with the United Nations World Food Programme (UN-WFP) in raising funds and awareness towards eradication of hunger and malnutrition among children. Also, plans are afoot to formally re-launch its corporate social responsibility portfolio for the organization in partnership with the Sunny Kuku Sickle Cell foundation. This is in addition to our impressive support to development of arts in Nigeria.

As Virgin Nigeria marks its third year of operations, the airline has set for itself the ambition of acquiring 40 aircraft in the next 5years; increasing staff base to 6,000 employees and generating about 100,000 ancillary jobs which will greatly reduce the rate of unemployment in Nigeria.




About Virgin Nigeria

Virgin Nigeria is Nigeria's private sector flag carrier, 51% owned by Nigerian institutional investors and 49% owned by Virgin Atlantic. The airline was formed in September 2004 when the Federal Government of Nigeria announced the selection of Virgin Atlantic Airways as the strategic investor and technical partner in this exciting project.

With the mission of being a World Class Airline from the heart of Africa, Virgin Nigeria, has steadily developed a global network that serves domestic, regional and international routes from its operational hub at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos.

With a focus on improving the customer’s experience, Virgin Nigeria is constantly developing innovative products for the convenience of its customers. Some of these innovations include the online booking and payment system. The online and booking payment system allows the customer to book from anywhere in world, as well as make payments with an interswitch debit card for people in Nigeria and most international credit and debit cards for persons in London.

Virgin Nigeria’s customers traveling on the domestic service can also make use of the new ‘Carry On, Carry Off’ product called “COCO”. This product allows passengers traveling on the domestic service carrying cabin hand luggage which is over 6kg to hand these over to the attendants at the foot of the aircraft. These bags are specially tagged and collected by the passengers on arrival at the tarmac.

Virgin Nigeria recently announced an order for 24 Embraer aircraft. The order consists of E170s and E190s jets. Delivery of the first aircraft is scheduled for September 2008.

Virgin Nigeria is listed on the IOSA Directory following its successful completion of the intensive IATA Operational Safety Audit which now places it at par with the best airlines in the world having shown its commitment and demonstration to airline safety standards

Virgin Nigeria is the first Nigerian airline and first West African carrier to be listed on the IOSA Directory.

For more information, visit www.virginnigeria.com