Why Aviation Suffered Worse Decline In 2016 –Operators

Nigerian airline operators said last year went down as one of the toughest and most challenging for them. They, however, see improvement in the sector this year, saying the industry has the potentials to witness good growth in 2017 if recession abates.

Some operators, who spoke to Woleshadare.net under condition of anonymity, said the situation was caused by the far-reaching implications of some underlying factors in the macro environment such as the devaluation of naira and high inflation, among others.

This is coming as the International Air Transport Association (IATA) disclosed that the aviation sector caters for 3.5 billion passengers globally and a major facilitator for as much as 25 per cent of world trade annually.

Given the global macro challenges, industry sources estimate that air transport business in major African cities have declined by $1 per passenger since the slide in oil prices two years ago.

But even with the sliding oil prices, IATA could see huge potential for air transportation in Nigeria, considering the country’s 170 million estimated population.

The association held that getting the huge population into flying required a sound business policy that would bring about low cost airlines. It also gave a yardstick to the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to ensure that the nation’s airports become fully functional if this potential is to be realised.

The state of airports in the country hasn’t won a pass mark. While the remodelling exercise was a scam, some airports are already rated worse in the process.

But even with that, reports from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show that air transport grew by 3.7 per cent year-on-year in 2015 and contributed 0.1 per cent to total GDP, the equivalence of N63 billion or ($317 million).

The report showed an increase of aircraft movement in and out of Nigerian airports in 2015 put at 61,692, approximately 6.9 per cent.

However, the NBS noted that in the third and fourth quarters of 2015, there were 11.3 per cent and 14.3 per cent fewer domestic flights than in the same quarter of 2014 respectively, which resulted in a total of 46,157 and 50,686 flights in the third and fourth quarters.

It also added that the year on- year declines in the number of international flights recorded 3.3 per cent and 10.5 per cent in the third and fourth quarters of 2015 respectively, which resulted in a total of 11,547 international flights in third quarter of 2015 and 11,006 in the fourth.

Wole Shadare