Nigeria’s Aviation Regulator Forces Foreign Airlines to Release Lower Ticket Inventory

To address the high airfares charged to Nigerian travelers by international carriers, the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has intervened and compelled foreign airlines to release their lower inventory tickets.

This comes after a two-day high-level meeting between the NCAA and foreign airlines in Nigeria, which focused on the urgent need to unblock all low inventory tickets.

The Director General of the NCAA, Capt. Chris Najomo, set up a 10-man Committee to look into the high cost of tickets in the country.

The committee, chaired by Director of Special Duties NCAA, Mr Horatius Egua, is responsible for ensuring that foreign airlines comply with the directives to unblock all low inventory tickets and recommend appropriate pricing of tickets in Nigeria compared to similar markets in the West African sub-region.

While some airlines like Lufthansa German Airlines, KLM, Egypt Air, Ethiopian Airlines, British Airways, Royal Air Maroc, RwandAir, and Turkish Airlines have released their low ticket inventory, Air France has failed to comply with the directives. The position of Virgin Atlantic remains unknown.

Despite the economic challenges and the depreciation of the Naira, airlines like Ethiopian Airlines have maintained high passenger volume on the Nigerian route.

However, the present economic conditions have not deterred Nigerians from traveling abroad, as many airlines still record good passenger traffic to different destinations in the world.

The NCAA has deemed the high airfares and blocked low inventory tickets as discriminatory and unfair practices, and it has rejected these practices in totality.

The meeting to deliberate over the high airfares had in attendance representatives from the NCAA, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), and the National Association of Nigerian Travel Agencies (NANTA).

As the situation develops, it remains to be seen if the foreign airlines will fully comply with the directives of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority and if the Nigerian travelers will see a decrease in airfares.