Nigeria Aviation Sector May Shutdown Operations Today

• As NNPC grants airline operators to import ATK themselves

Airline operators in Nigeria may stop their operations today over scarcity of aviation fuel (ATK).

Blaze Newz gathered that the operators on Monday warned that they have only three more days to fly due to the rising cost ATK.

CEO of Air Peace and vice president of the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), Allen Onyema, had earlier stated at the public hearing of the House of Representatives committee investigating the scarcity of aviation fuel.

Onyema said the AON members may start charging Nigerians N120,000 per ticket for domestic flights and can only operate for the next three days before they shut down.

“If we continue this way, the least ticket you will have is about N120,000. And the marketers have refused to tell us how much is the unit cost of their acquisition,” he said.

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Onyema said if ATK marketers did not reduce the price of the commodity from the current N670 per litre, regulators should give the airlines licence to import.

According to him “What we are asking from the government is to give us the right to import aviation fuel. What others use in insuring one plane is what we use in insuring three planes in Nigeria, so the Nigeria airline is dead on arrival.”

After about one hour of argument on the cost of aviation fuel at the hearing, the airline operators and marketers agreed on N500 per litre for the next three days, while they work on new price modalities.

The Group Managing Director of NNPC Limited, Mele Kyari, who announced the new agreements, said the request by the airline operators to import ATK will also be granted.