With airlines reportedly cancelling recently resumed local flights on account of inadequate patronage, calls are coming for the Federal Government to urgently lift the extant ban on international flights into and out of the country.
This is coming less than a week after the reopening of airports for national flights, which has seen some airlines successfully run flights, notably between the two most dominant national aviation hub cities of Lagos and Abuja.
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This notwithstanding, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the apex aviation regulatory agency in the country, is still insisting that the time may not be ripe to resume international operations. A second point being raised is that the decision to open or not was beyond it to take and should therefore be routed through the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.
The New Diplomat gathered that the Director General of NCAA, Capt. Musa Nuhu, made the clarification in response to pressure by travel agencies and other allied stakeholders in the country for international flights to resume.
At the NCAA industry restart webinar held on Tuesday, spokespersons of the travel agencies made a passionate appeal to the authorities to lift the ban on international flights.
The President of the National Association of Nigerian Travel Agencies (NANTA), Susan Akporiaye, and her predecessor, Bernard Bankole, who spoke on behalf of the travel agencies that practically constitute the downstream sector of the aviation industry made it clear that more would be gained than lost from reopening the international skies.
Akporiaye said since evacuation flights were carried out virtually on a daily basis since the COVID-19 pandemic started, the Federal Government could lift the ban on international flights even if it would allow two or three flights per week.
Before the parley, many travel agencies had been crying over the huge losses they have incurred as a result of the ban on international flights in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
One of the travel agents at the meeting said, “If we could manage evacuation flights this way and guarantee their safety, why can’t we take in international flights which have prepared well ahead of time to ensure safety on board.”
Responding to the concerns of the travel agencies, the NCAA DG disclosed that the Federal Government had started working on public health protocols for international flights.
He empathised with the agencies for the huge losses they were incurring, saying that they were not alone in the loss saga as the NCAA itself as an agency also generated 85 per cent of its revenue from the management of international flights.
