Aviation crisis: Airlines lose 40,000 passengers daily

Hope for seamless air travel from one part of the country to another is still shaky as Nigerian domestic airlines are currently short of about 40,000 aircraft seats daily, findings by Saturday PUNCH has shown.

The shortage is due to the suspension of operation by five domestic airlines, namely Air Nigeria, FirstNation Airlines, Dana Air, Chanchangi Airlines and Associated Airlines.

The five airlines used to supply combined monthly seats of 1,174,500 from a total of 29 aircraft, according to the investigation. (Each aircraft makes five daily rotations with 135 average seat capacity per flight).

Further investigation showed that the three airlines currently operating have a total of 40 aircraft. 11 out the 40 are, however, currently under routine maintenance abroad, depleting the current domestic capacity further by a total of 445,500 monthly seats.

This gives a combined capacity shortage of 1,620,000 aircraft seats every month, including the five airlines that are currently on ground.