No fewer than 877 flights were cancelled across 26 Nigerian airports in 2022 by 37 international and domestic airlines. This is according to a report obtained by Nairametrics.
The report, titled ‘Executive Summary on International and Domestic Flight Operations’, was released by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).
Breakdown of the flight cancellations: The report said the flights were cancelled by 26 international airlines and 11 domestic carriers. It further noted that 795 cancellations were recorded by the 11 domestic carriers while only 82 flights were cancelled by international airlines.
Comparing the current figures with the past, the report indicated that 2022 recorded more flight cancellations than the previous year.
Nairametrics earlier reported that in 2021, there were a total of 529 flight cancellations in all the airports across the country, indicating that there were 298 more flight cancellations in 2022.
No reason for the cancellations: Meanwhile, NCAA did not state the reason for the cancellations. But information gathered by Nairametrics show that the increase may not be unconnected to the Jet A1 scarcity and price hike, which almost paralysed the industry in the past year.
Recall that a litre of Jet A1 increased from N300 per litre at the beginning of the year to about N790 per litre by December 2022.
This led to an increase in airfares in domestic travel by almost 100 per cent.
The airlines were accused by various private and government agencies of fixed pricing, which they debunked. But sources confirmed that the operators had met under the auspices of Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) to fix the N50,000 base airfare.
Other key stats from the report: The NCAA report further revealed that 93,331 flights were operated by the 37 airlines in 2022. The breakdown indicated that 80,328 flights were operated by 11 domestic airlines in 2022, while 13,008 flights were operated by 26 international airlines within the period.
- The 37 airlines (local and international) had a total number of 51,772 flight delays in 2022.
- Out of this number, domestic airlines had 47,144 delays, while international airlines recorded 4,628 delays within the period under review.
- Also, the inbound and outbound passengers in 2022 were 16,173,361.
- For the international airlines, the country recorded 3,503,722 passengers, while the domestic airlines had 12,669,639 passengers.
- Further breakdown of the statistics revealed that inbound passengers in the international scene were 1,648,255, while outbound passengers were 1,855,467.
- For the domestic scene, Nigeria recorded 6,309,662 inbound passengers, while the outbound was 6,359,977 within the period.
The passenger figure showed a 13 per cent increase in the 2021 figure of 14.2 million and the highest number of passengers to be recorded in the sector after the COVID-19 pandemic.
- In addition, the figure is 9 per cent less than the pre-COVID passenger figure of 17.5 million, which was the highest figure recorded under the current administration.
- In all, the NCAA summary indicated that there were 188 complaints received against domestic airlines with 135 resolved while 178 complaints were brought against foreign airlines with 123 resolved.
