This Christmas season is already looking bleak for many passengers who spend hours at Nigerian airports waiting for their flights, some of which eventually get cancelled as a result of aviation fuel scarcity.
It has been established that passenger traffic is higher during Christmas, meaning more passengers will be affected by this delay.
According to the Nigerian Aviation Sector report for 2014/2015, there was a rise in patronage level, which peaked in Q4 of 2014, with 4,163,762 million passengers travelling, up 227,744 or 5.59 percent from Q3 of the same year.
The report said highest numbers of international passengers for both Q3 of 2014 and Q1 of 2015 were recorded at the Murtala Mohammed Airport (MMA) Lagos, with 852,049 passengers or 71.36 percent of the total in Q4, passenger numbers declined by 153,320 or 17.99 percent in Q1, to 698,729 or 48.22 percent of the total.
According to the quarterly report, year-on-year, the Q1 2015 volume of travellers was 294,011 passengers or 8.61 percent greater than the figures recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2014, whereas Q4 was 594,317 passengers or 16.65 percent greater than the number recorded in the closing quarter of 2013.
“My client has an appointment in Abuja few hours from now and she is supposed to be boarding now, but the airline just made an announcement that the flight will be delayed for another one hour due to scarcity of aviation fuel,” a travel agent told BusinessDay.
According to him, ‘the flight has been delayed due to scarcity of aviation fuel,’ which as become a standard announcement at Nigerian airports, where passengers spend much of the day waiting for their flights.
“Most domestic flights have been delayed for hours or cancelled in the past two weeks, leading to subsequent loss of business. This should not be happening at a time like this when there is Christmas rush and passengers are longing to get to their destinations,” Bankole Bernard, president, National Association for Nigerian Travel Agents (NANTA), said.
However, Hadi Sirika, minister of state for aviation, yesterday, appealed to passengers, saying, “While this recession will last and while this problem of forex availability will last, we’ll have to appeal to Nigerians and other people that pass through our airports to exercise patience and be aware of the situation.”
Nigeria is trying to import more jet fuel but passengers must be patient as a shortage of foreign currency will continue to hurt the airline industry, the minister of aviation said.
He assured that the central bank was releasing more hard currency but that fuel importers were competing with health, education, transport, social services and security agencies, which also need dollars.
Nigeria’s foreign exchange reserves have dwindled as low oil prices have reduced a crucial source of dollars, pushing the country into recession. Oil accounts for 90 percent of Nigeria’s foreign exchange.
Aviation fuel, which was previously sold for N120 per litre, is currently selling at N240 to N300 per litre, due to the scarcity. This has led to domestic airlines warning that if no urgent action is taken to improve the supply of aviation fuel, they may be forced to suspend their services.
Arik Air, few days ago alerted passengers of worsening aviation fuel supply leading to flights delays and some cancellations at airports across the country.
According Adebanji Ola communications manager, Arik Air, said, “The fuel scarcity which has been on for several days is becoming more intense with the inability of approved major fuel marketers to meet the demands of airline especially at this time when maximum numbers of passengers are travelling for the yuletide.
“Arik Air, the largest airline operator has been operating over 100 daily flights and therefore experiences a larger impact of this scarcity compared to other airlines.”
The airline said it requires a daily supply of approximately 500,000 litres for its operations but it has been getting between 180,000 and 200,000 over the past 10 days, which has severely impacted the scheduled flight operations.
“Despite the abrupt and random fuel price increase by some marketers, which the airline may be forced to pass on to its customers, the product supply still remains epileptic,” Ola added.
BusinessDay’s findings show that all domestic airlines consume one million litres of aviation fuel daily. This shows that at the rate of N120 per litre, airlines pay a sum of N120million daily on fuel but at the current rate of N250 to N300 per litre, airlines will have to pay N250million to N300million daily on aviation fuel.
This bitter development has led to an appreciable increase in prices of tickets by other airlines to locations within Nigeria.
Checks by BusinessDay show that a return ticket from Lagos to Abuja with Dana, Medview and AirPeace, which previously charged below N50,000, is costing between N80,000 to N85,000.
On the other hand, passengers travelling to Port Harcourt, Enugu and Owerri are seeing a similar increase as AirPeace, Dana and First Nation which before now charged below N55,000 for a return ticket now charges between N90,000 to N100,000.
