Fares stable as increased airline capacity contains year-end rush

Domestic airlines are having a field day as the Christmas and New Year rush of passengers which subsided last weekend into Monday, picked up again yesterday, leading to increase in flight frequencies into major cities across the country.

The airlines are however not increasing their fares as a one hour flight still rests between N8,900 and N22,000 depending on the platform of ticket purchase.

Industry watchers say this is because of the recent increase in the ranks of of domestic carriers in the country, which has expanded capacity.

The new entrants include Azman Air, Discovery Air and Air Peace.

Air Peace comes with seven (Boeing) B-737 aircraft, Azman Air with three B-737; Discovery Air with three B-737 and FirstNation also with three B-737 , bringing wider choice to travellers who had only four airlines to choose from, four months ago.

Our reporter observed yesterday, that airlines such as Aero, Arik, Dana, Medview and Discovery Air among others, were instantly adding frequencies to their schedules on routes such as Lagos-Abuja, Lagos-Port-Harcourt, Lagos-Kaduna and Lagos-Owerri, responding to demand.

Many travelers who spoke to BuainessDay said they had booked for cheap tickets online before now.

The stepped up schedules saw an increase in the frequency of flights on the Lagos-Calabar, Lagos-Enugu, Lagos-Benin, Abuja-Benin, Lagos-Kano, Abuja-Kano, Abuja-Asaba and Abuja-Ibadan routes.

“There is an increasing demand from our guests on our domestic routes. Arik Air is committed to providing all of its guests with a range of flights at suitable times. We have identified and delivered on the demands and are continuously reviewing our route network to offer increased convenience and seamless connections”, Chris Ndulue, Arik Air managing director said.

In the past few weeks, the domestic operators have been experiencing a business windfall, as the flow of passengers transformed into a fever-pitched rush, on account of heightened political activity prelude to next year’s general elections. Then came the Christmas-New Year rush.

With the rate of passenger movement and additional airlines, cumulative passenger traffic for 2014 is expected to be higher than its counterparts four years ago.
Statistics from the last four years shows that in 2010, passenger traffic was 13,981,677, in 2011, traffic was 14,889,958, in 2012 it was 14,116,790 while the sector recorded 14,641,768 in 2013.

And in the first quarter of 2014, it was 3,416,977.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, air transport contributed N32.6 billion to Nigeria”s “rebased” GDP in 2010, N36.6bn in 2011, N42.7bn in 2012 and N48.8 bn in 2013 representing an average of 4.8% of transport and storage sector and an average of 0.05% of total nominal GDP during the period.

The sector grew at a compound average growth rate of 14.3 percent between 2010 and 2013.