Stakeholders: Airlines Lose N4bn Revenue Annually Due to Limited Flight Hours, Aircraft Underutilisation
Aviation industry stakeholders have stated that Nigerian airlines lose about N4 billion revenue annually due to inability to operate flights for longer hours.
They identified lack of airfield lighting at some airports, paucity of air traffic controllers and insecurity as reasons for the limitation of airlines to operate their aircraft for longer hours.
According to industry experts, a Boeing 737 could be operated for over 16 hours a day. However, in Nigeria only few airports operate for 24 hours and these include Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kano airports. Others largely operate from 6:30 am to 6:30 pm daily and most aircraft operate only for about eight to 10 hours rotation due to ground turn around, which is gross underutilisation of the equipment.
A senior official of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), told THISDAY that beyond the absence of airfield lighting at some airports, the major challenge is that the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) does not have enough Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) personnel to run shifts, “and because of this some airports in Nigeria cannot operate beyond 6:00 to 7:00 pm daily.”
He said Air Traffic Controllers are not allowed to work longer hours because of the critical role play in safe flight operation, emphasising that stretching them could lead to dire consequences.
“We have acquired airfield lighting which we are installing at the airports that do not have them, but the major problem we have currently is that there is inadequate number of Air Traffic Controllers. ATC cannot work for long hours. So, in many airports they have to close by 6:00 pm because they do not have enough personnel to do shifts. The problem is not FAAN staff because we have enough. During Christmas period we operated some airports till 11:00 pm. When airlines request that they would operate late hours into some airports, we keep the airports open for them. We operate our power system till that time the airline will operate the last flight to that airport. But we cannot keep all the airports open because some of the airports do not have enough traffic controllers to do shift,” the FAAN official said.
This was confirmed at the weekend by the Managing Director of NAMA, Umar Ahmed Farouk, who disclosed that one of the major challenges the agency is facing is paucity of Air Traffic Controllers.
“We don’t have enough Air Traffic Controllers. The challenge is still there. This was the mistake