Advertisements
The Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) recorded over $16.98m as Ticket Sales Charge (TSC) from international airlines and another N9.16billion from local airlines in the first eight months of 2018.
This is as passenger traffic in between January and August hit 2.4 million with 27, 100flights so far.
The regulatory agency said it earned the sum through its recently upgraded automation system.
Capt. Muhtar Usman, Director General, NCAA, revealed this over the weekend in Lagos in an interview with journalists.
According to the civil aviation regulator, international passenger traffic from January to August indicated that 10 of the airlines were carrying the traffic with Ethiopian Airlines taking the lead with over 134.104, 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.
For domestic passenger traffic, seven airlines are pulling their weight with Air Peace in the forefront with over 340.664, with 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.
The NCAA DG said, there had been boost in travel activities since the country came out of recession and more were expected in the coming days and months.
“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,” he said.
Usman further stated that air travel demand as projected by the International Air Transport Association, (IATA) 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 said: “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.”
Advertisements
