Flight delays have continued to worsen as 16 airports across Nigeria do not have facilities for night operations, forcing airlines to cancel flights that cannot meet up with the 6.30 pm landing time.
Out of 22 airports managed by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) only Abuja, Port Harcourt, Benin City, Enugu, Kano, and Kaduna airports have airfield lightning to enable flights land and take off on or after 6.30pm, while others are referred to as ‘Day Light’ airports.
They say when aircraft develop technical issues or there is a weather issue making airlines operate behind schedule, the flight time to these airports may be delayed, which means outright cancellations since airlines cannot operate into them at a certain time.
The situation has worsened because many air travellers have taken to the air as Nigerian roads have become unsafe.
Nigeria’s biggest domestic airport, the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, also does not have airfield lighting for night flights, thereby forcing airlines to land at the International terminal, then taxi for 20 to 30 minutes to the domestic terminal to disembark passengers.
Obiora Okonkwo, chairman, United Nigeria Airlines, laments that one of the major challenges of the daylight airport is that it forces airlines to limit their operations to those airports to 6:30 pm.
Okonkwo says no airline enjoys delaying or cancelling flights but the inability to land and take-off from these airports on or after 6.30 pm is causing airlines huge revenues as they have to cancel flights more frequently.
“80 percent of Nigerian airports are daylight airports. This sunset regime puts a lot of pressure on our operations and our schedule because you have to schedule to make sure you start your business and end before sunset. You might not believe that all the local airports here are on sunset operations, it has to be looked into.
“There must be a proper extension, these airports are there and if you don’t have the facilities to operate up to a certain time like 11 pm-12 pm and it costs the operators huge sums of money. If airlines operate till 11 pm or 12 pm, they will be at liberty to spread flight intervals and that will increase on-time performance and customer confidence,” he states.
Another operator, who craved anonymity, states that airlines have continued to write to the authorities to ensure these airports are upgraded for night flights but the request has been ignored.
The operator says if this continues, many airlines may go under as just daily flights may no longer be sustainable as more airlines enter the market.
John Ojikutu, aviation security consultant and secretary-general of the Aviation Safety Round Table Initiative (ASRTI), tells BusinessDay that FAAN and other regulatory authorities should be blamed for failures to provide airfield lighting that is a major safety feature at the airport.
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FAAN and the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) should answer the questions why there have been no airfield lighting in most of the airports and why the repairs of the MMA 18L have not been done more than 10 years after, Ojikutu states
He says the excuses for others can be related to passenger traffic and the published hours of their operations.
“You cannot compare the passengers’ traffic figures at Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, and possibly Kano where there are AFL and 24 hours operational hours with airports like Jos, Yola, Maiduguri, Sokoto, Katsina, Ibadan, and Akure, with operational hours limit at 18.00 hours; whereas passengers traffic figures for airports like Enugu, Owerri, Benin City, and Calabar require that the operational hours of these airports be reviewed upwards to 20.00 or 22.00 hours daily from 17.00 or 18.00 hours.”
He notes that these latter airports would require AFL so that airlines can fly to them after sunset.
“One major solution to these is to allocate some of these airports as operational bases for the domestic airlines instead of their concentration in Lagos MMA. Their first flight should be from their operational bases to the prominent ones like Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt, and from these they can begin their market sharing,” he advises.
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