It is a familiar terrain. It remains to be seen how the domestic carriers survive the onslaught of multiple destinations/ designation, to foreign airlines and what remains for them with the policy, writes WOLE SHADARE
Backward step
s “It is a case of step forward and many steps backward. We make gains in one area, but fail to consolidate on the gains we have made. We would rather throw away those gains willingly without consideration for how those decisions hurt the system,” an airline operator bitterly lamented when he spoke with New Telegraph last week.
His lamentation stems from the decision by the Federal Government to grant more destinations to some carriers and by extension more frequencies in a bid to make foreign air travel to be more accessible to the people in the hinterlands.
This action by government had not been met with excitement by local airline operators and supporters of the carriers who admitted that allowing many of the foreign carriers to operate to more than two destinations in Nigeria amount to depleting the local market and making the aviation business less profitable for entrepreneurs who sank several millions of dollars into the airline business.
Abysmal domestic growth
The Nigerian aviation market is not only small, but abysmal and one that the over 200 million population cannot even sustain because of so many factors primarily occasioned by the economic situation, which has caused a low propensity to fly by many Nigerians. It is shocking that the domes- tic passenger traffic had oscillated between seven and eight million before the outbreak of COVID-19 that led to the closure of borders around the globe in 2020.
To understand the great damage this may have on the domestic airline business, Qatar Airways was reported to have been allowed to Kano and Port Harcourt, doubling its network to Nigeria. On the other hand, Africa’s biggest airline by size and profit, Ethiopian Airlines is now regarded more as…