Nigeria’s Aviation Sector Loses $700m in Revenue to COVID-19 Pandemic

IATA Says Nigeria’s Aviation Industry Loses About $700m to COVID-19

The International Air Transport Association has said Nigeria’s aviation sector lost $700 million to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Funke Adeyemi, Africa Regional Director, IATA, disclosed this on Tuesday during a webinar titled, ‘A national conversation: Mapping Nigeria’s response to COVID-19.’

She said, “Aviation is one of the hardest-hit sectors. Over the past three months, passenger travel reduced by 90 per cent. That led to a loss of $28.5bn in GDP for Africa and put about three million jobs at risk.

“For Nigeria, the loss was colossal; the industry had about $700m loss and about 90,000 jobs at risk across the entire value chain of aviation.”

Adeyemi, who thanked global leaders for the proactiveness on lockdown, said without lockdown the sector could have helped spread the deadly virus.

She said, “Even though passenger travel was down and none existent, aviation was still supporting the fight against COVID-19 by ferrying medicines and essential provisions around the continent.

“Aviation continues to maintain its criticality – it’s not just a means of transportation; it is actually an economic business, which supports the fight against COVID-19.”

She explained that IATA and other global bodies are working on ways to make air travel safer for travelers around the world.

She said, “The industry has been working proactively to see how we can mitigate the risk of spread where aviation is a vector for spreading and, at the same time, conveying passengers and the government. COVID-19 is with us for some time. There is no solution for it.

“However, what the UN, IATA and ICAO have come up with is a series of biosecurity temporary measures. It would look at the entire end-to-end passenger journey, right from pre-flight where we can collect passenger data and health declaration forms through established platforms, to travel procedures at the airports, and temperature checks.”