Nigerian Aviation Faces Turbulence with Rising Fares and Aircraft Shortfalls

…Industry Experts Call for Urgent Solutions 

The Air travel sector is a complex system where ensuring smooth travel experience is hinged on numerous factors.

One of these is availability of aircraft to meet the ever increasing demand by patrons.

Lately, the lack of aircraft capacity by domestic operators has led to much discomfort for passengers. The operators too are suffering from reduced profitability, operational challenges and stifled growth.

With the shortage of aircraft, the demand for flights outstrips supply, airlines are forced to raise prices to balance the limited availability.

These gaps according to the Acting Director General, Civil Aviation, Captain Chris Najomo urgently has to bridged to bring down the fares, adding that, to handle the cheering growth in the domestic air services operation requires the presence of investors and key operators with the capacity and technical knowhow to further stabilise the growth expectations and satisfy the desires of consumers.

Currently, a one way 30 minutes or an hour flight on local routes costs over N250,000 to N300,000.

Travel and tourism ambassador Mr. Ikechi Uko says, local flight ticket are now more expensive than on the regional route.

“I travelled to five airports in one week, Lagos, Abuja, Benin, Anambra and I also did Ghana, for those five airports, the cheapest I paid was Lagos-Accra, all five one-way and was above N200,000 but the cheapest was Accra N217,000. Lagos-Benin was above N220,000, how come Accra is cheaper than the local flights?”.

Apart from high airfares, delays and cancellations of flights are common and many airlines have had to prioritize their profitable routes, reduced the number of flights or stop operation to some routes.

According to Mr. Fortune Idu, chairman, Airport business summit, this had led to ticket racketeering at some airport terminals and desperate passengers are paying exorbitantly for flight tickets.

“Far and above the airline stated amount because it is a desperate situation, the airline staff in connivance with touts or unregistered protocol officers can take advantage of this to make money for themselves”.

An airline operator, Mr. Roland Iyayi blamed the aircraft capacity constraint issue on government.

According to him, aircraft due for maintenance cannot be flown out and those abroad cannot return, sourcing spares is near impossible all due to paucity of forex.

“Domestic airlines don’t have easy access to forex and their capacity is reduced because most of their aircraft are stocked in maintenance facilities abroad and until that is addressed, am not sure we can see any change in that situation”.

He noted that, problems on certain Boeing aircraft types owned by Nigeria operators grounded has further compounded the current issue.

“Air Peace am aware for instance, have packed 4 or 5 of its airplanes it taken delivery of. It’s the same problem everywhere in the world, Boeing 737 Max is having a problem about quality issues”.

Group Captain John Ojikutu retired said, lack of aircraft capacity is nothing more than the lack of MRO and insufficient forex to support maintenance in foreign countries.

“Ask the airlines and they would each tell you how many of their aircraft are on ground due to periodic maintenance and those outside the country but can not return because there is no DOLLARS to pay for their return home”.  

Today, aircraft manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus have limited production capacity and operators may face a long wait for orders to be delivered.

A U.S based aircraft maintenance engineer, Mr. Femi Adeniji is of the opinion that, operators should start considering using smaller airplanes instead of focusing on the bigger jets for certain routes.

“Like ATR 72, 42, Embraer 145 or 135 with adequate fuel efficiency would relieve the passengers and reduce maintenance costs”.

Already, plans are in motion by the Government to get aircraft manufacturers lease planes to operators with the guarantee that all terms and conditions will be meant.

However, in the interim, the only quick fix to this aircraft shortage issue, Mr. Alex Nwuba, President, Association of Aircraft Owners of Nigeria, AAON and Mr. Adeniji say, is making available forex.

“We must deal with this problem comprehensively, starting with the foreign exchange regime”. 

“If there is regulated allocation of foreign exchange from the government, set up MRO in the country, this would alleviate some of these problems”.

Addressing the lack of aircraft capacity would require concerted efforts from airlines, regulatory agencies and stakeholders to ensure the industry is resilient, capable of meeting the needs of patrons and avoiding going back to the dark days of the COVID-19 pandemic.