- Three passengers arrested over threat to Air Peace London-Lagos flight
- Turkish Technic, Air India Express sign New Deal For 190 B737-800, B737-10 aircraft
- Okonkwo: Multiple charges, airlines' albatross
- Addressing Africa’s aviation market share
- Minister, UAE sign amended air pact, Air Peace inks interline deal with Emirates
Nigeria’s fast receding, vanishing aviation market

Robust domestic market
The Nigerian domestic market is robust and has elicited wide acceptance by many as one of the biggest in Africa and unarguably the biggest in West Africa propelled majorly by a huge population.
The Nigerian airline industry has witnessed a high turnover of domestic airlines since deregulation; generally, many of the local airlines have been short-lived, with many operating for a few years and then folding

Two things such as fear of insecurity coupled with bad roads across the country are chief among the reasons many people would like to travel by air despite the skyrocketing cost of air transport in Nigeria and the incessant flight delays and cancellations that have dogged the sector lately.
Price elasticity suggests that if airfares are reduced on Nigeria’s domestic routes, demand for air travel is likely to increase since these routes are short-haul. Nigeria has the lowest air travel propensity among peer economies like Venezuela and Egypt with similar population sizes.
Consequently, the high fares on many of the domestic routes have made road transportation the option for many who cannot afford airline tickets despite the dangers on the roads. The road transport subsector in Nigeria according, to Phillips Consulting, accounts for the second-highest share of modal contribution to transport output.
On the domestic scene, Nigeria’s aviation industry has a flurry of activities. There are indications that more airlines are angling to begin flight operations. There has never been a year that one or two airlines do not join existing carriers.
Different scenario
While the country’s domestic market is growing and has potential for further growth, the same cannot be said for the international market as many of the domestic carriers have been dwarfed by foreign mega carriers even in their environment.
This is not limited to Nigeria alone. Foreign airlines are spreading their wings to Africa, regarded as the last frontier for domination by many mega carriers.
Lack of strong interconnectivity despite being a signatory to the Africa Union (AU) policy of the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) and other initiatives before now has shown that virtually all African airlines except Ethiopian Airlines have the capacity and capability to compete.
It even speaks volume that many of the cities in Africa have to be connected by travelling to Europe or the Middle before connecting to another African nation.
Not a few believe that it is easier in some cases to travel from Africa to Europe than from one destination to another in Africa. That says so much about how poorly Africa is connected by air.
Many Nigerian carriers like Ibom Air, ValueJet and Overland Airways have stated repeatedly that they should be counted out of international routes outside of West and Central Africa.
The Managing Directors of these airlines told Aviation Metric recently that there is a huge market in Nigeria’s aviation domestic market and the regional market.
They showed contentment with what these routes in West Africa and Nigeria offer them. They said it is a sheer waste of resources and amounts to fetching water into a basket by venturing into routes Like London, Frankfurt, Paris, Dubai, US because of the huge costs the destinations offer.
Nigerian carriers are highly constrained and have so many things stacked against them including low-level finance to acquire many of the aircraft that would help them compete with big European carriers.
Fail national carrier attempts
The about 95 Bilateral Air Services Agreements (BASA) Nigeria has with many of the foreign airlines are said to be lopsided and not helped by the failed attempts to float a national carrier.
Many of the attempts in the past failed spectacularly, especially the Nigeria Air saga which the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development said remains suspended but there seems to be an indication that the Federal Government may be looking at resuscitating the project once again following a hint from the newly appointed Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Aviation, Dr Ibrahim Abubakar Kana when he spoke with journalists in Abuja.
Kana said that the President handed him the mandate to float a national carrier and to see improved easy facilitation at the major airports in Nigeria.
A few aviation experts said the charge by the President to the Aviation Ministry via the Permanent is a welcome development.
To them, the absence of any Nigerian carrier to have a modicum of competition on the international scene is troubling for a nation of 220 million people as they expressed the joy to have a carrier whether they are privately owned, whether they are national flag carriers, whether they are ordinary flag carriers or national flag carriers where the government has some equity.
Expert’s view
The Chief Executive Officer of Belujane Konsult, Mr. Chris Azu Aligbe explained that Nigeria is large enough that it can have about three formidable airlines in the global space, but lamented that a situation where “We don’t have an airline of note is something very much uncalled for. To think that there are some people who still believe that we should not have a national carrier baffles me”.
“But the fact of the matter is that foreign airlines that are operating have left us with not much hope in terms of the progress the country is making in the airline sub-sector. Our airlines need assistance,’ they need some help, but the fact of the matter is that they have not shown that we can move forward. They have not demonstrated capacity. When you say capacity, people think of the number of aircraft.”
“It’s not the number of aircraft. Capacity in the industry is multidimensional. Even managerial capacity and managerial competence is critical to it because even if you have five aircraft or ten aircraft, the way you manage those aircraft and keep to schedule and everything is enough to show that you are on the incline. After all, Ibom Air does not have too many aircraft, but Nigerians believe that so far so good, it is better managed.”
“Overland is a niche carrier, but it has stayed firm on the niche, showing signs of grappling with the challenge of managing an airline. The new airline on the block, ValueJet, is showing good signs. Today, I have said it, we don’t have an airline of note.”
“Nigerians cannot stand up and fly any of the airlines to various destinations seamlessly. All that we now have is a point-to-point operator, and that is sad because we are in the dark ages of airline operations. It’s clear to Nigerians, it’s clear to everybody that we are not there.”
“Nigerian air travellers cannot but fly other airlines that offer them a seamless travel experience. Not that they don’t want to fly Nigerian carriers, but if they cannot get what they are looking for, they have to go to where they can get it. Today, Nigerians will fly to destinations via Kigali with RwandAir. Any reasonable person who knows about air travel cannot support a situation where Nigerians cannot have the best opportunities to travel seamlessly to their destinations, which is the present situation.”
Aligbe carpeted stakeholders who expressed concern over the partnership of national airlines with ‘competitors’, arguing that the world is no longer talking about competition but ‘cooperation’.
He said, “In the airline industry, people don’t talk about competition, they talk about cooperation. Ethiopian Airlines, is it a competitor? What is it competing with? What airline do you have?
“Delta has bought 49 per cent of Virgin Atlantic. Branson, after many years of solo run as an owner, now has sold 49 per cent equity to Delta Airlines, and once you’ve sold that to Delta Airlines, Delta Airlines is a major carrier owned by millions of Americans. Millions of Americans own Delta Airlines. So when he buys equity there, he’s American, he knows a lot about equity. We need the establishment of a national carrier”.

Back seat
A study by air travel intelligence firm OAG Aviation In 2019, Emirates whose flights to Johannesburg, Cairo and Cape Town earned $850 million. British Airways which runs the most flights in the world’s only billion-dollar route earned half a billion dollars in its annual flights to South Africa’s major urban areas. This figure may have doubled in 2024.
In 2023, statistics showed that European carriers dominated intercontinental flights to and from Africa.
According to simpleflying.com, over 100 airlines have scheduled flights to and from Africa in December 2023, serving various cities in all regions of the continent.
Another data from Cirium, half of the top 10 airlines operating intercontinental flights from Africa are European. Unsurprisingly, the other half consists of African carriers.
Nigeria may have offered many of the foreign carriers multiple destinations within the country because of a lack of capacity. The granting of Fifth Freedom right to five UAE airlines which further opens up the market could be the final nail on the coffin of a big market like Nigeria even if the country is given a ten-year head start as no airline from Nigeria at the moment reciprocates the UAE route.
Last line
This trend of dominance of Africa’s space is expected to continue. It has created a loophole for foreign carriers to continuously exploit the continent’s aviation sector to the detriment of local airlines.
Google+