The price of aviation fuel, known as Jet A1, leaped by over 110 per cent from April 2016 till date, taking up for 40 per cent of airliners’ operating cost.
A litre of the product was sold at N105 in April 2016 but in May, the price climbed to N145 and before mid-2016, it had shot up to N200 per litre adding to airline’s operating cost, Daily Trust’s analysis revealed.
Chairman of Airline Operators of Nigeria, AON, Capt. Nogie Meggison, bemoaned the development, even as he said the operators could not increase their ticket prices.
Megisson said: “We have been forced to cry out about the perennial problem at this juncture because it continues to put us in a difficult situation to go an extra mile to fulfill our obligations to our esteemed customers in spite of the inconveniences that go with it.
However, we are at the mercy of the oil marketers and many times our hands are tied such that we are left with no other option than to cancel flights.”
Oil marketers have always attributed the shortage to scarcity of foreign exchange and despite the current massive interventions in forex by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the problem has continued unabated.
It was learnt price of the fuel has hit an all-time high of N220 per litre in Lagos and N240 to N260 in Abuja and the North East respectively.
With an average of one hour domestic flight gulping 2,500 litres on the Boeing 737 classics, the airlines would have consumed 120,797,500 litres in 2017 amounting to N25,367,475,000 at N210 per litre which was the price per litre as at December 2017.
