Intl’ Travel: Nigeria’s Risky Dance As Pressure Mounts

The slow re-opening of international airspace by Nigeria and other nations boils down to trust. Countries are rebuilding relationships under enormous economic pressure, while keeping a wary eye on a virus that’s not going away soon, WOLE SHADARE writes

Mounting pressure

After months of lockdown of borders, Nigeria that seemed to have stifled the COVID-19 crisis is trying to choreograph a risky dance; how to bring back visitors without importing another burst of uncontrolled contagion. The country is under enormous pressure.

The Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, is inundated with pressure from the highest quarters to fling open the doors for air travel to resume. He is going about it with cautious optimism. Many citizens are stranded all over the world and want to come back home. Evacuation flights are on-going and very costly.

They come with so many bottlenecks. For now, people can get into and outside the country only if they get clearance from the government for humanitarian, cargo and evacuation flights and carry health certificates proving they tested negative for Covid-19. Many are of the opinion that international air travel should resume because of what they describe as unregulated evacuation flights, which are wearing the guise of scheduled flights.

Charter flights they claimed are operated like scheduled flights for the wealthy. International travel has always been a proxy for trust among nations and people, but the pandemic has poisoned the air. Now, relationships are being rebuilt under enormous economic pressure, with a wary eye on a pathogen that is not going away anytime soon.

Risk calculations

 Some countries are eager to find ways to reopen doors to people from places, like the United States, that are still struggling with the virus but are important sources of trade and tourism. Others are scanning the globe for safer, if less lucrative, partners. The challenge for every country involves both epidemiology and psychology.

Trips for business and pleasure must have enough restrictions to make travelers feel safe, but not so many that no one wants to bother. African nations face a difficult choice as infections are  rapidly rising. Now welcome to international flights that originally brought COVID-19 to the continent, or further hurt their economies and restrict a lifeline for badly needed humanitarian aid.

“This is a very important moment,” the World Health Organisation’s Africa chief, Matshidiso Moeti, told reporters few weeks ago; a day after Egypt reopened its airports for the first time in more than three months.

Other countries are preparing to follow. That’s even as Africa had more than 470,000 confirmed virus cases as August 5, 2020 and South Africa, its most developed economy, already struggles to care for COVID-19 patients.

Africa’s economies sick

The continent faces its first recession in a quarter-century and has lost nearly $70 billion in the travel and tourism sectors in the past five months, the African Union says.

Airlines alone have lost about $8 billion and some might not survive. Most of Africa’s 54 countries closed their airspace to ward off the pandemic. That bought time to prepare, but it also hurt efforts to deliver life-saving medical supplies such as vaccines against other diseases. Shipments of personal protective gear and coronavirus testing materials, both in short supply, have been delayed.

But some governments have decided travel needs to resume. Africa has seen far fewer flights than other regions during the pandemic.

Sometimes the entire West and Central African region saw just a single daily departure, according to International Civil Aviation Organization (IATA) data. While Asia, Europe and North America averaged several hundred departures a day from international airports, the African continent averaged a couple or few score daily. African nations want to join the crowd. Senegal’s president had said international flights would begin on July 15.

The 15-member Economic Community of West African States is yet to reopen its airspace originally slated for July 21. Nigeria resumed domestic flights on July 8 and Rwanda on Aug. 1.

Kenya Airways resumed international flights on August 3. South Africa and Somalia are open for domestic ones, and Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Tanzania and Zambia now have commercial flights.

Tanzania opened its skies weeks ago, hoping for a tourism boost despite widespread concern it’s hiding the extent of infections. It hasn’t updated case numbers since April. Good to be back Africa’s largest carrier, Ethiopian Airlines, declared late last month that it was good to be back. After scrambling to revamp its services for cargo and repatriation flights in the past few months, it now wants to play a leading a role in “the new normal.”

For Nigeria, it could be a few more weeks before restriction on international air travel is lifted. This was confirmed by the Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, last week without giving a specific date for the resumption after months of closure due to the global coronavirus pandemic.

“It will be in weeks rather than in months,” Sirika told a regular briefing in the capital Abuja on coronavirus. Nigeria began to close its airports in March, a month after Africa’s most populous country confirmed its first coronavirus case. Domestic air travel restarted last month.

Review of guidelines

The Nigerian government had in July inaugurated the National Air Transport Facilitation Committee to review the guidelines for the reopening of the country’s airports to international flights. Members of the committee include officials from ministries of Aviation, Foreign Affairs, Health, the Interior, Culture and Tourism and government agencies such as Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Nigerian Customs, Nigeria Immigration, Nigeria Police,    Nigerian Quarantine Service, and Nigeria Drug and Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).

The aviation agencies are in serious financial dire straits. They are unable to pay staff salaries because international flights were yet to resume.

According to Sirika, “the industry need passenger movement especially international passengers to survive, it’s very difficult for us to pay salaries so we want to open more than you want to open,” adding that “we daily deal with it but it is subject to several factors, all the sacrifice the industry is making is in the interest of the general public.

“We will definitely reopen. We will definitely re-open very soon and when it’s safe to do so reopening is the work of not only the aviation industry but other MDAs left to us we would have open since as it would help us make more money and carry out our activities pay salaries and provide the services. ”

Unprofitable carriers continue to fly An industry that has been known to be unprofitable for decades would be eventually forced by market participants to undergo consolidation and rationalisation in an attempt to find a better way to do business. Not so for the airline industry, for whom this basic business precept does not seem to fly, so to speak.

Many unprofitable airlines continue to remain in business despite years of substantial losses, because various stakeholders cannot afford to let them close. Closing down a large unprofitable airline would involve the loss of thousands of jobs, inconvenience to hundreds of thousands of travelers, and millions in losses for the airline’s creditors.

Not to mention the loss of national pride if the airline in question is a national carrier. Because closing down a floundering airline is a politically unpalatable decision, governments will usually provide it with a financial lifeline to stay in business.

Struggling airlines often have to resort to cut-throat pricing to fill up their excess capacity, and as a result, even the stronger players in the industry are adversely affected by this lack of pricing power.

Last line

The airline industry is particularly vulnerable to exogenous events such as COVID-19. In Nigeria for example, airlines and the sector in general collectively are estimated to have racked up losses in excess of N300 billion from the closure of both domestic and international airspace, caused by coronavirus that hit the world since early this year.

Wole Shadare