- Domestic Flights: Over 60% Delayed in 2018
Most domestic flights in Nigeria experienced one form of delay or the other in 2018.
The data released by the Consumer Protection Department of Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) showed domestic airlines recorded 36,350 cases of delayed flights between January and December 2018.
According to the News Agency of Nigeria, a total of 59,818 flights were operated by nine airlines in 2018. Putting the percentage of delayed flight at 60.1 per cent of all flights operated, while 544 flights were cancelled during the period.
The nine airlines were Aero Contractors, Arik Air, Air Peace, Azman Air, Dana Air, First Nation, Med-View, Overland and Max Air.
At the top of the chart is Air Peace, the company operated 22,055 flights with 14,067 delayed flights and 137 cancelled flights during the period.
Followed by Arik Air with 8,073 delayed and 152 cancelled flights out of 15,205 flight operated.
Dana Air operated 5,944 flights, 3,915 delayed flights and 67 cancellations.
Azman Air operated 4,944 flights, 3,242 delayed flights and 49 cancellations.
Aero Contractors operated 4,361 flights, 2,459 delayed flights and 70 cancellations.
Overland operated 601 flights, 196 delayed flights and 29 cancellations.
Medview operated 2,058 flights, 1256 delayed flights and 42 cancellations.
Max Air operated 2,205 flights, 1,151 delayed flights and 5 cancellations.
FirstNation Airways operated 445 flights, 137 delayed flights and 3 cancellations.
According to the airlines, the delays were due to operational reasons like aviation fuel scarcity as well as adverse weather conditions leading to low visibility at most of the national airports.
Mr Sam Adurogboye, General Manager, Public Relations, NCAA, said one of the ways to reduce flight delays was to construct modern terminals to ease passenger facilitation.
Adurogboye said: “Some of these problems are infrastructural related. The government is remodelling most of the airports and this will ease passenger facilitation.
“By the time these modern facilities are deployed, it will curb unnecessary delays.
“However, issues like adverse weather or a machine (aircraft) developing a problem cannot be ruled out, and you can’t expect them to fly with a machine that had developed problem. Those ones happen occasionally.
“So, we hope that very shortly, these delays will be reduced drastically, and we are working toward that.”
