The Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) recorded about N15.27 billion being Ticket Sales Charges (TSCs) on foreign and local commercial airlines plying the nation’s airspace from January to August this year.
The charges comprised $16.98 million (about N6.12 billion) as TSC from international airlines and another N9.16 billion from local airlines
This is even as the agency reported a surge in passenger traffic during the eight month period rising to 2.4 million with 27, 100 flights so far.
The NCAA’s Director General, Capt. Muhtar Usman, who gave these hints at the weekend in Lagos during a chat with journalists attributed the improved revenue partly to the agency’s recently upgraded automation system.
According to him, international passenger traffic during the review period indicated that 10 airlines were operating the country routes, with Ethiopian Airlines taking the lead with over 134, 104 passengers, followed by Emirates with 107, 217; British Airways, 86, 249; and Turkish Airlines,70, 392 passengers.
Others are Air France, 70,144; KLM Royal Dutch, 63,990; Virgin Atlantic Airways 63, 448; Delta Airline,39 196; Qatar, 38,706; and South African Airways, 36,868 passengers.
At the domestic passenger traffic end, Air Peace recorded over 340,664 passengers, followed by Dana Air trailing with 330, 370, AZMAN, 245,437 and Arik, 177,061 passengers. Others are Medview, 156,226, Aero, 138,146 and Overland, 78,166 passengers.
On the performance of the sector since Nigeria exited recession, Usman reported some growth in the sector and expressed the hope for brighter prospect for it in the months ahead.
He clarified: “Yes certainly, its going up, don’t forget that we came out of recession, during the recession so may things happened, now the economy is out of recession a lot of activities that’s commercial activities and so on, so people are being more empowered in terms of this movement, we should expect even more.”
The NCAA boss projected that air travel demand based on the International Air Transport Association, (IATA) forecast would continue to grow with more connectivity, adding that the second position of Africa in the region in the July 2018 passenger traffic of 6.8 per cent increase could be surpassed with direct link in the continent.
He explained: “There has always been that projection that aviation in Africa is growing and the rate of growth is one of the highest in the world. We lack that internal connectivity within the Africa region and once those sectors are developed you would see much more increase in the movements because for example, if you want to go to Niger as of today, you hardly have any direct link even though airlines have been designated, one of the ways of going there, is to go to Lome (Togo) and then go to Niamey (Niger) when from Abuja it shouldn’t be more than one hour.
“You will now spend a whole day and off course and as a lot of cost you have to go to Lome through Asky and maybe take you either direct to Niamey or when they are coming back they go through Burkina Faso and so on, but once we start having this connectivity direct, the cost would also be expected to reduce and then more people would be able to afford to fly, so it is expected that the increase would continue”, Usman added.
