Three years after six Nigerian airlines formed the ‘Spring Alliance’ to support each other’s operations and enhance passenger service, shrinking fleet sizes have continued to undermine the initiative.
In 2022, Air Peace, Azman Air, United Nigeria Airline, Arik Air, Aero Contractors and Max Air signed the alliance to engage in interline collaboration to protect their operations and improve service delivery to passengers.
The purpose of the alliance was also to curb flight delays among the six partners, give one another technical support and ensure that passengers are airlifted by any of the members, irrespective of their tickets.
However, three years after the agreement was signed, passengers have continued to face flight delays and cancellations as member airlines have continued to struggle with shrinking fleets, which most times cannot cater for their passengers and other airlines.
Allen Onyema, chairman and CEO Air Peace, said: “We still have our own Spring Alliance amongst ourselves. The problem is that sometimes when you call the other airline, they may have a full aircraft, and capacity then becomes the issue,” he said.
Stakeholders have however argued that at a time when there are dwindling numbers of air passengers over increase in airfares and low disposable income, passenger glut reflects huge aircraft shortage in the domestic airlines travel space.
BusinessDay’s findings show that airlines have been unable to airlift all of their passengers without record of flight delays and cancellations.
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Lack of capacity
Last year, data obtained by BusinessDay from Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) showed that 13 domestic airlines together operate a total of 91 aircraft. This data includes aircraft that have gone on maintenance.
BusinessDay’s investigations show that about two years ago, local airlines had between 75 and 85 aircraft but they currently have less than 40 in operation, and there are indications that aircraft previously ferried overseas for maintenance may not return due to the inability of airlines to access forex.
Nearly 50 percent of domestic airlines’ flight operations have either been delayed or cancelled in the last 12 months as aircraft scarcity and airlines’ schedules continue to disrupt flights.
Airlines have been hard hit by a series of challenges ranging from aircraft scarcity to poor flight scheduling. Other challenges are: unavailability of forex for spare parts and maintenance, consistent bird strikes, weather, restrictions caused by sunset airports, delays from customs in clearing of safety critical spare parts, amongst others. These issues have continued to cause delays and cancellations, leaving several passengers stranded.
In Nigeria’s domestic aviation landscape, a total of 70,543 flights took to the skies in 2024. However, the journeys were not always smooth-sailing, with 47.1 percent of flights experiencing delays (33,235 out of 70,543) and 1.7 percent seeing cancellations (1,189 out of 70,543), the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority, (NCAA) data show.
Ado Sanusi, managing director, Aero Contractors, confirmed to BusinessDay that capacity has remained a challenge for some airlines on the alliance.
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“There may be scarcity of aircraft and some of the airlines don’t have the capacity to protect. Some have maybe reduced their operations and their capacity to protect has reduced. But when you enter an agreement, you try and keep it.
“Where there are no available aircraft, the airline concerned may not be able to protect. Some of the airlines protected our passengers when we had disruptions but some did not because of capacity,” Sanusi said.
He also hinted that some airlines were also not able to protect Aero because of the price agreement.
“The price is volatile and in the agreement, we don’t peg the price. So, we agreed that it was not going to be the selling price but at least something cheaper.”
Olumide Ohunayo, industry analyst and director of research at Zenith Travels, told BusinessDay that data on flight cancellations and delays by the NCAA have been able to expose the level of flight disruptions in the country.
“Flight delays have continued to increase because most of the schedules that the airlines had are still there while the aircraft are reducing in number. This means they need to adjust their schedules. In not adjusting their schedules, they are made to merge flights, thereby delaying flight operations,” Ohunayo said.
He also mentioned that commercial agreements among the airlines have failed to start.
“We have seen domestic airlines launch codeshare but none has materialised. Till today, we are yet to see any of the airlines pull their passengers on another airline’s flight. Till today, the victims of the demise of Dana Air have not been refunded. They have also not been able to use the ticket on another airline,” he said.
Ohunayo suggested that the NCAA can release data weekly or monthly and not have to wait till the end of the year to address the causes of the delays and put the airlines on their toes.
