Many Nigerians with the tradition of travelling to other states to see their families and friends during Christmas season are fast dropping the tradition as many put on hold their travelling plans owing to the high cost of airfares and insecurity across the country for road users.
Plane tickets are getting more expensive, making them out-of-reach for the ordinary man, and road, the alternative means of travelling for the Yuletide, now seems to be a channel of income for kidnappers due to the high rate of insecurity across the country.
Insecurity on Nigerian roads in the form of kidnapping, highway robbery, accidents due to bad roads, and over speeding amid hikes in the cost of tickets now stand as a threat to passengers.
Babatunde Adeniji, an Aviation Management Consultant, told BusinessDay that citizens should strongly advocate for the improvement of security across the country.
Adeniji said that the government was not giving the issue of security the highest priority it deserves, stating that citizens also have a role to play through vibrant sustained advocacy.
“To improve security, we must start with some basics: the relevant agencies must be empowered and held accountable.
“We read constantly in various media about the poor working conditions of government workers, lack of tools, inadequate human and other resources to cover the requirements of the nation’s security needs, and even abdication of the country’s security roles to various private interest groups, we just need to show more seriousness and less lip service,” Adeniji said.
Read also: Airfares to hit record high in 2025 amid aircraft supply crisis
He further said that only serious and sustained pressure on the government at all levels can induce fast, speedy, and sustainable results.
Against expectation that nine aircraft recently added to the fleet of Nigerian airlines would reduce air fares, findings show that this may not be the case as airlines continue to raise fares owing to high operational costs.
Airlines recently leveraged loans and partnerships to bring in aircraft to feed local routes during the yuletide period.
The airlines had taken bold steps by boosting fleet capacity in a bid to benefit from the ‘showers of Christmas.’
United Airlines acquired one Embraer 190 aircraft, Xejet joined schedule operations with four aircraft both Embraers and CRJs, Ibom Air brought in two CRJ 900s aircraft and Air Peace boosted its operations with two aircraft that recently returned from maintenance outside Nigeria.
However, the boost in fleet is yet to reflect on air fares as high operating and maintenance costs continue to asphyxiate domestic airlines, putting pressure on their long-term sustainability, making fares high.
Air fares across destinations in the country have risen to over 200 percent as Christmas approaches.
Air Peace, one of the leading airlines in the country, through its booking portals show ticket prices for its different routes.
While routes like Abuja and Lagos flown by more airlines seem to see a slight reduction with an average fare of N130,000 for a one-way economy class ticket, other routes have continued to increase fares.
Outbound and inbound one-way economy class tickets from Lagos to Enugu, Owerri, Port Harcourt and Asaba which sold for an average of N100,000 by this time last year are now selling for an average of N170,000 or more.
For United Nigeria airlines, an economy class ticket from Lagos to Abuja, Enugu, Owerri, Port Harcourt and Asaba which sold for an average of N100,000 last year now costs between N180,000 to N350,000.
Read also: Airfares jump 250% in 12 months amid Christmas bookings
Other domestic airlines charge between N170,000 and N400,000 for one-way economy class tickets from Lagos to frequently flown destinations.
Data from the most recent National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) transportation report shows that the average fare paid by air passengers for specified routes for a single journey was N126,293.05 in October 2024, showing an increase of 1.28 percent compared to the previous month (September 2024). On a year-on-year basis, the fare rose by 60.31 percent from N78,778.38 in October 2023.
Experts have attributed the rising costs of airfares to the volatile naira and high costs of fuel, making it hard for passengers to afford them.
John Ojikutu, industry expert and CEO of Centurion Aviation Security and Safety Consult, said that about 70 percent of air traveller tickets are paid for by public and private employers.
“An average return journey fare is over N300,000, how many employees earn that to buy tickets? How many airlines can do their major maintenance here without going abroad and where is the dollar for the maintenance abroad?
“Why is it only in Nigeria that the cries are higher than others about airfares? Commercial aviation is a global market, and its operations are factored against the dollar rate, so are the fares tariffs,” Ojikutu said
He mentioned fuel as a major contributor to flight operations, stating that until yesterday, it had not been locally produced in over twenty years but imported with dollars.
“In the early and mid-90s when our four refineries were working and the dollar rate was N40/$, the average flight tickets were between N3,800 and N4,000, and the dollar has been rising gradually since then almost yearly,” Ojikutu said.
He added that most airline operators do not consider these in their business plans before committing to commercial aviation services.
“They ask for subsidies or government intervention rather than going to the banks,” he said.
“So long as the Regulators of the respective sectors fail in their responsible economic regulation oversight on the operator’s compliance before coming into service and when in service, the consumers will have no succor”
“In the economy of today, governments can neither support private airlines nor can an individual have the cash for air tickets without the support of his employer which the employer does not have,” Ojikutu said.
Adeniji explained that airlines are exposed to some of the worst impacts of the high cost of doing business, naira depreciation, and the generally poor state of the economy.
“It seems they are even struggling to be able to recover their cost and maybe even some small profit. If input costs are high how can prices be low?”
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