Domestic airline shortage worsens, leaving passengers stranded across Nigeria

The shortage of aircraft in Nigeria’s domestic airline market has worsened, leaving many passengers stranded as available flights have drastically reduced.

According to reports by DAILYTRUST, passengers were unable to secure flights to their destinations on Tuesday, with the Lagos-Abuja and Abuja-Lagos routes being the most affected.

By 4 p.m. yesterday, several airlines reported full bookings, leaving no available seats for the busiest routes in the country.

For instance, a Max Air flight scheduled for 6 p.m. was reportedly fully booked, but later, it was revealed that the flight did not operate at all. Similarly, Air Peace flights at 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. were either fully booked or canceled, as no seats were available on their website.

An airline operator, speaking with our correspondent, cited capacity constraints as the reason for the limited flights, exacerbating the situation for passengers across the country.

“There is a shortage of capacity and many people are travelling,” the operator said.

Another operator who spoke on the condition of anonymity said, “What I can tell you is that most of the airlines have capacity issues and they have also reduced their operations, cutting down drastically to avoid issues.”

Aviation analyst, Mr Olumide Ohunayo said, “Basically what you have seen is that most of those flights that were said to have been sold out were either cancelled or they are not going to operate. So it shows the effect of the new consumer protection software and online reporting process which is now very open.

“So, airlines are being careful not to leave schedules open when they know that they are not going to operate it.”

He said ahead of the yuletide, airfares might increase due to the existing capacity constraint.

“Again, we are approaching the December period when more people will begin to travel and flights will go up. We cannot stop the airlines but what I can say is that we have to encourage more competition to allow more licensing of AOC,” he said.

He stated that the civil aviation authority must create a new licensing regime to create opportunities for smaller operators.

(DailyTrust)