SAN FRANCISCO, October 18, (THEWILL) – Two foreign airlines are about to suspend flights from Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.
According to Reuters, Emirates intends to suspend its flights from Saturday, October 22, while Kenyan Airways has served notice to follow suit from Tuesday, November 15.
Prior to Emirates’ complaint, a number of Airlines had pulled out of Nigeria owing to hardship in repatriating foreign currency on naira-dominated tickets sold in the country, coupled with hardship in getting aviation fuel.
In September, Emirates revealed that it had begun refuelling its daily Abuja-bound flight in Accra, Ghana, and had already cut its twice-daily flights to Lagos and Abuja to only one.
A spokesman for the airline revealed that Nigeria risks being naked due to its inability to drive an easy fund repatriation policy.
Tim Clark, Emirates President, speaking on the side-lines of an International Air Transport Association (IATA) event, emphasized that the difficulty in recovering its tickets in dollars would impact its financial statements.
“In certain African countries, the currencies have really gone down, so we’re reflecting on a number of these to look at where it’s just not worth us travelling,” he said.
“We have major differences, being dollar-denominated, in what we collect and what we represent in our financial statements.”
According to Reuters, Clark said the first half of its financial year had been tough compared with last year.
The airline introduced fees this month for passengers who want to select their seats in advance on economy class fares and Clark said the airline could consider introducing other charges on some services, such as fees for additional bags, “where there’s a value proposition, rather than a penalty”.
He added that Emirates’ load factor – a measure of capacity utilisation – for the rest of 2016 and 2017 would probably be in the mid-70s to low-80s in percentage terms, though there would be some peaks and troughs.
Story by Oputah David
