Flight delays: Airlines record 36,350 delayed flights in 2018

Flight delay by domestic airlines went unabated and has continued to take the joy out of air travel.

 As a result, domestic airlines operating in Nigeria recorded 36,350 cases of delayed flights between January and December 2018. This was contained in statics released by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).

Nigeria’s biggest airline, Air Peace ranks first as the airline with the highest 14, 069 flight delayed, 137 cancelled flights and operated 22, 055 flights.

The statistics from the apex aviation regulatory body shows that 59,818 flights were operated by nine airlines during the period under review.

According to the document, 544 flights were cancelled for various reasons by the airlines.

NCAA listed airlines in operation as Max Air, Dana Air, First Nation, Overland, Arik, Azman Aero Contractors, Air Peace and Medview.

Next in line was Arik Air which followed with 8,073 delayed flights and 152 cancellations out of its scheduled 15,205 flight operations.

Dana Air on the other hand operated 5,944 flights with 3,915 cases of delayed flights and 67 cancellations.

Azman Air recorded 3,242 and 49 delayed and cancelled flights respectively, out of the 4,944 flights operated by the airline during the period under review.

Also, Aero Contractors operated 4,361 flights with 2,459 delayed and 70 cancellations; Overland, 601 flights with 1,960 delayed and 29 cancellations; and Medview, 2058 flights with 1,256 delayed and 42 cancellations.

Max Air recorded 1,151 delays and five cancellations, out of the 2,205 flights operated by the airline.

Similarly, FirstNation Airways, whose licence has been suspended by the NCAA, recorded 137 delayed flights and three cancellations, out of 445 flights operated within the period under review.

However, the delays, according to the airlines, were due to operational reasons, bordering on scarcity of aviation fuel as well as adverse weather conditions leading to low visibility at most of the airports.

Spokesman for NCAA, Mr Sam Adurogboye, said one of the major ways to reduce flight delays was the construction of modern terminals or remodelling of old ones to ease passenger facilitation.

Adurogboye said, ‘’some of these problems are infrastructural related. The government is remodelling most of the airports and this will ease passenger facilitation.

“By the time these modern facilities are deployed, it will curb unnecessary delays.

“However, issues like adverse weather or a machine (aircraft) developing a problem cannot be ruled out, and you can’t expect them to fly with a machine that had developed problem. Those ones happen occasionally.

“So, we hope that very shortly, these delays will be reduced drastically, and we are working toward that.”

An airline who spoke to Woleshadarenews on condition of anonymity said, “Time is of essence in global aviation business. Just a minute delay, is enough to ruin an entire operation and cost the airlines dearly”.

In other airports around the world, the standard time for processing a passenger through the checkpoint screening is about two minutes. Some best of the bunch airports process faster.

Around here, it is less seamless and for many reasons. While screening bottleneck is the main constraint at Air Peace’s General Aviation Terminal (GAT), Lagos, there are other factors ranging from the chain reaction of such morning delays, low capacity to execute schedule, aviation fuel shortage and technical issues, among others under the umbrella of “operational issues” often given as excuses for flight delays.

In Nigeria, it is a chain that is also complicated in nature and one that has persisted despite efforts by the regulatory body and airlines to rectify the situation.

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Wole Shadare