The executive chairman of the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), Captain Nogie Meggison has said, Nigerian airlines lose at least N20 billion annually to flight cancellations largely caused by lack of landing aids required for night landing and landing in bad weather.
Meggison stated that in some airports night flights are not operated because there are no runway lights while visuals flight had to be either delayed or cancelled because navigational aids are not working.
“There have been skeletal flights for the past two weeks. About 50 per cent of the daily flights have been cancelled because the landing aids are not working and flights cannot operate in low visibility. But in other parts of the world people are flying at zero visibility because they have landing aids at their airports. For three days, Enugu flights were cancelled even at 2,000 meters visibility. There are no landing aids, no navigational equipment in some airports.
“An airline that has not flown for three days has incurred so much loss because you pay the pilots, you refund money to the passengers, you pay your suppliers. Some of the airports do not have runway lights. This is also what is happening to other industries, causing a huge loss of manpower,” he said.
According to aviation experts, if all necessary equipment was provided at the airports, aircraft can land at zero visibility and many modern aircraft have global positioning system (GPS) which enables them to land at the lowest visibility. But the failure to provide such safety critical equipment has made it difficult for the airlines to utilise the GPS in the aircraft.
The deputy managing director of Arik Air, Captain Ado Sanusi also blamed the lack of landing aid at most airports in Nigeria for the thousands of flight cancellations the airline observes each year.
He said last week alone the airline cancelled three flights to Benin, three flights to Asaba and two flights to Osubi in Warri each day and when multiplied by the number of passengers for the aircraft type that operates to such airports that airlifts about 70 passengers and at the cost of N25,000 to N30, 000 per ticket, saying the amount they lose is huge.
Sanusi said that huge amount of money is being lost regularly and the only way to put an end to these losses is for the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and other concerned authorities to install instrument landing system (ILS) at the airports.
Many of the airports in Nigeria do not have the equipment and some of the airports also do not have airfield lighting system (AFL); so some airports can only be used during the day and when there is poor visibility such daily light service is shut out for safety reasons.
