Delta Air Lines to buy 49% stake in Virgin Atlantic Airways.

Sky Watch Nigeria.

Delta Air Lines Incorporated is nearing a deal to buy a 49 per cent stake in Virgin Atlantic Airways Limited from Singapore Airlines Limited and may pay less than $500m for it, three people familiar with the matter said.

The price range is $300m to $500m and an agreement may be announced this week, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. Singapore Airlines paid £600m for the Virgin Atlantic stake in 1999, or about $966m now.

Bloomberg News reported that Delta and Virgin Atlantic may seek a joint venture on trans-Atlantic routes as part of the arrangement, two of the people said.

Virgin Atlantic’s base at London Heathrow airport is a gateway for flights across the North Atlantic, the world’s most lucrative market for premium passengers.

“Heathrow access, that’s what Delta finds attractive here,” said Savanthi Syth, an analyst at Raymond James & Associates Incorporated in St. Petersburg, Florida, who rates Atlanta- based Delta outperform.

“This is not necessarily a carrier that they expect to make a big return on investment on. There’s a reason Singapore is getting out.”

Virgin Atlantic, founded and majority-owned by United Kingdom billionaire Richard Branson, posted a pretax loss of $129m for the year ended in February, and has delayed adding planes.

Representatives of Virgin Atlantic, Singapore Airlines and Delta declined to comment about the sale process.

Delta, Air France-KLM and their SkyTeam partners are the smallest alliance group at Heathrow, with about 5 percent of takeoff and landing slots. Oneworld, led by British Airways and AMR Corp.’s American Airlines, dominates with almost half of all service, followed by United Continental Holdings Inc. and its Star Alliance partners with about a quarter of slots.

Nigerians among worlds highest Private Jet owners.

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Nigeria which currently holds a record being among countries with the highest private jet ownership in Africa. According to an official of Bombardier, the Canadian aircraft manufacturer, Nigeria ranks behind the United States. United Kingdom, and China among countries that top their orders for the supply of the aircraft type; just as there are indications that N1.30 trillion may have been expended in the last seven years. Nigeria is said to top the market for private jet ownership.

Aircraft manufacturers like Bombardier, Gulf Stream, Embraer, Hawker Siddley and Challenger have made Nigeria their huge market because of the demand for these aircraft types by wealthy Nigerians. The common brands of private jets in Nigeria are Hawker Siddley 125-800 and 900XP, Gulfstream 450, 550 and 650; Bombardier Challenger 604, 605; Global Express; Embraer Legacy and Falcons.

This private jets are not in all cases owned by individuals. The oil-rich Rivers State owns an AW139 helicopter, which it leased to a commercial airliner. The state then turned around to patronize the airline’s VIP Sikorsky S76C helicopter. Last year, the state government sold its Dash 8-Q200 aircraft to Cross River State for $6 million. Cross River State then leased the plane to Aero Contractors to undertake commercial flights to and from Obudu airstrip in the state.

The Managing Director of Aero Airlines, Captain Akin George, had recently spoken on the increasing number of private jets being parked at most of the aprons of Nigerian airports was particularly piqued that most of the private jets carry foreign registration credentials rather than Nigerian registration. The decision to register the jets in foreign countries, particularly in South Africa, is said to be informed by the notion that in case the owners want to resell the jets, they would warrant a bigger value from buyers.

He had initially called on the authorities concerned in the country to make registration processes in Nigeria friendly and attractive. The economic downturn in Europe and the United States had made Nigeria and China to become two of the fastest growing private jet markets in the world. There are many factors that have encouraged the rise of acquisition of customized jets, which cost between N2.4 billion and N9 billion. Chief among these is the fact that flight schedules in the aviation industry are no longer flexible. Inclusive is the huge passenger traffic that make air travel difficult for those who wish to travel by air. In a situation like this, wealthy Nigerians would opt to acquire their own private jets to save time that would have been wasted waiting for flights whose times of departure are not known.