- Najomo hinges Nigeria’s aviation future on transparent procurement system
- MMA2: A Beacon of Hope for Nigerian Airports
- Airline group raises concern over South Africa’s aviation infrastructure
- Turkish Airlines opens largest Int’l lounge at Tokyo Narita Airport
- Kenya Airways begs NCAA over passenger maltreatment
18 airports operate below 25% of domestic traffic –Report

Eighteen of the 22 airports in the country have operated below 25 per cent domestic traffic in first and second quarters of 2015, while only four of the airports accounted for over 75 per cent.
Presently, only Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos; Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja; Port-Harcourt International Airport and Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport, (MAKIA), are said to be commercially viable.
The others can barely sustain themselves. All the airports are managed by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN).
The 18 airports, which have recorded disappointing traffic, are dormant and highly underutilised. This is even coming at a time many state governors of Ekiti, Osun, Abia, Bayelsa and others have embarked on airport projects, which many observers said would not generate much traffic.
Virtually all the airports, including the one in Abuja, run on generators, as they are not connected to the national grid. Besides, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), it was learnt is not comfortable with some of the projects that were handed to them shortly after completion as it lacks enough manpower to man them.
A source disclosed to New Telegraph that most of the airports, including the one in Dutse, built by Jigawa State, were a big drain on the budget of the aviation agency.
The agency added that there was no point building facilities that do not have direct impact on the people.
Latest figures as contained in the Nigerian Aviation Sector Summary Report for the two quarters showed that the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos; Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja; Port Harcourt Airport, Rivers State; and the Kaduna Airport handled the highest number of passenger traffic.
The other airports were less busy, with some of them recording no passenger movement at all. For instance, the Maiduguri airport had no international traffic in 2014 and recorded insignificant traffic in those two periods; those in Katsina and Sokoto reported just 13 and four passengers respectively in the second quarter of the year.
According to the report, the airport with the greatest number of passengers travelling domestically in the second quarter of 2015 was Lagos with 1,106,787 passengers or 37.15 per cent of the total.
In the third quarter, the number rose by 7,129 or 0.71 per cent to 1,013,916 passengers or 38.27 per cent of the domestic total. It stated that the second highest number of domestic bound passengers travelled through the Abuja airport, with 845,243 passengers, or 31.19 per cent of the total in the second quarter.
Quarter on quarter, this showed a rise of 143,944 passengers or 20.53 per cent from quarter one, only to decline by 57,261 passengers or 6.82 per cent in quarter three so that the total number of passengers stood at 787,622 or 29.73 per cent of the total.
The Port Harcourt airport with 314,176 passengers or 11.59 per cent of the total had the third largest number of passengers travelling on the domestic routes.