Airline operators in Nigeria have estimated that there is about 30 percent reduction of passenger traffic in the domestic market even as few airlines remain operational.
They concluded that if no action was taken to save the airlines, only two may survive by end of 2017.The operators also said that with the passenger reduction, the high cost of aviation fuel and scarcity of FX which hinder the ability of the airlines to buy and import aircraft parts, Thisday reports.
CEO of one of the airline operators said that the situation was exacerbated by the fact that bankers are not extending credit to the airlines and that it is becoming increasingly more difficult to access FX despite the inclusion of airlines in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) forex window along with manufacturers.
The top airline official said: “At the moment, our airline has lost about 25 percent of the market, although there is passenger surge sometimes but that may be because some other airlines stopped operation or that one airline could not operate on that day.
“The major problem is the high cost of Jet A1. The marketers have been warning us and telling us about low stock, which means very soon the product may become scarce again,” the official said.
He noted that it is true that CBN added the airlines in the forex access window “but they said that we would benefit from this in the next two months but we need the money now.
He said they had a meeting with the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and they deliberated on how they could carry out some of the maintenance locally as it is becoming increasingly difficult to ferry aircraft overseas for maintenance because of the FX problem.
