A combined photo of Festus Keyamo and Chris Najomo
Flights delays and cancellations have of recent become the staple of airlines operations in Nigeria, causing untoward losses to passengers whose businesses are tied to timing. This challenge has become a hydra head in the aviation sector.
Of recent, the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) had a fruitful meeting with domestic airlines on how to extenuate flight delays and cancellations.
This seemingly intractable challenge is caused by a slew of factors.
In his opening address during a recent stakeholders’ meeting, the Director General, NCAA, Captain Chris Najomo, disclosed that in September 2024, airlines operated 5,291 flights with 2, 434 delays and 79 cancellations and in October 2024, domestic airlines recorded 5,513 flights with 2,791 delays and 111 cancellations.
Najomo voiced strong disapproval at the incessant delays and cancellations, expressing determination to find the solution to the problem.
The Director General said the authority would put measures in place to checkmate the actions of unruly passengers at the airports.
He said NCAA would not condone passengers beating up airline staff when flights are cancelled or delayed due to bad weather or at any other time and insisted that any passenger who goes against the rules at the airport would be persecuted.
Addressing the airlines during the meeting, Najomo said airlines must abide by the conditions provided by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Regulation (NCAR) in making sure that passengers are efficiently served.
He acknowledged that delays and cancellations could sometimes be inevitable, but noted that poor management of these disruptions exacerbates the problem.
According to him, it is the responsibility of airlines to ensure that every disruption, whether due to operational, technical, or weather-related challenges, is handled with the utmost professionalism and regard for passengers’ rights.
NATIONAL WAVES agrees with Najomo, but beyond the rhetoric, passengers need concrete actions to stem the tide. There’s a need to improve
timely operations, from the airlines to the provision of infrastructure at the airports.
We are persuaded of the complicity of a host of factors for these delays of flights and cancellations. It would seem more often than not what leads to flight cancellation is when an airline cannot operate to certain airports known as sunset airports. Some airports close at 6pm because they do not have airfield lighting or no personnel to man the airports during the night. Some airports that have such facility are also closed because of the cost of sustaining their operations in the night. It costs more money to open the airports in the night due to high cost of fuel.
We are also of the view that the incessant power outages by public power supply has made imperative for airports to work out a secondary power supply, which is generator. There is a high price to pay for this, which is the high cost of fuelling the generators .
This has made it a big economic challenge for airport management to provide service in the night, except the international airports in Kano, Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.
Airlines fly to these sunset airports and they try in their scheduling to serve these airports during the day but sometimes delays caused by factors that emerge during the course of their operations snowball and force the airlines to push down the flights to dusk and when they cannot be guaranteed safe landing they cancel the flights.
This newspaper is of the opinion that central to most cancellations is AOG (aircraft on ground). When an aircraft already scheduled for flight service through the day develops fault and it has to be grounded; all the flights scheduled after the grounding of the aircraft will be affected and this may lead to the cancellation of flights.
Weather also plays a major role and occasionally leads to the cancellation of flights; but weather causes most of the delays during harmattan and in the rainy season due to thunderstorm.
Only recently, the Managing Director, Flight and Logistics Solutions Limited, Amos Akpan, highlighted variables responsible for flight delays. He noted that causes of flight delay cuts across all organisations and institutions in the industry.
“The Following institutions and players in the aviation industry contribute to flight delays and cancellations: airlines, the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), the Federal Airport Airports Authority of Nigeria (NCAA), Nigeria Aviation Handling Company Plc (NAHCO), Skyway Aviation Handling Company Plc (SAHCO), Nigerian Customs Service, the National Drug law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) the Nigeria Air Force, police, the Nigeria Immigration Service, NAFDAC, Nigeria Quarantine Service, NCAA, the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NIMET), fuel suppliers, passengers, cargo agents and telecommunication companies (TELCOs).
“Unless we accept the impact of each of the above mentioned in the efficient delivery of service to their consumers, we will remain in the complaint and blame zones without growing.My point is, if you know what each contributor is doing wrong, bring it to their notice, and ensure appropriate solution is applied to fix it. For instance, the immigration is fixing the menace of manual processes with the corruption it harbours. Our Honourable Minister of Aviation is fixing the bottlenecks against dry lease of aircraft by Nigeria airlines.
“Let each agency, each service provider, including the airlines take responsibility for their role in these flight delays. Those that pretend they don’t know how their activities contribute to flight delays should be told. Step one is knowing how they are part of the problem. Step two is knowing the solution. Step three is the sector control by regulations. This step three brings all players into a performance level required in the industry; otherwise known as minimum required level of service delivery. Nobody and No organisation should operate in the industry below this minimum required level of service delivery. The airlines cannot magically produce excellent services in an environment where other inputs are inefficiently served. For example, at Lagos airport, an airline estimates that it will take forty minutes to fuel an aircraft, therefore plans with flight and ground operations to release same aircraft to operate next flight scheduled in sixty minutes,” Akpan said.
We can not but agree with Akpan’s, but beyond this blame game, the ministry in charge of aviation and aviation agencies under it together with stakeholders should come up with durable solution to this embarrassing challenge.
This is the position of this newspaper.
