Revenue Loss Looms Over Abuja Airport Closure

Ahead of the planned closure of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport runway, Abuja for repairs in February and March, there is a looming loss of revenue by the aviation sector.

Concerned stakeholders, who faulted the alternative provisions that include diversion of traffic to Kaduna airport, said the move would bring much discomfort to air travellers and foreign airlines especially, forcing many to temporarily quit air travel to the northern part of the country.

With airlines and passengers quitting the region, revenue accruing to the regulatory agencies and ancillary services will drop, making required operations further difficult.

The Abuja runway of 4000 metres-plus has been in a bad shape in the last couple of months and was in December 2016 penciled for repair at the cost of N1billion. At least three foreign airlines, including South African Airways, have had their wide-body aircraft damaged in the process of landing on the runway.
While the repair would last for at least six weeks, the Minister of State for Aviation announced that the runway would be closed and traffic diverted to Kaduna airport, from where buses will take passengers back to Abuja in a two-hour road journey.

The Chairman, Governing Board of the Nigerian Aviation Safety Initiative (NASI), Capt. Dung Pam, said though temporary closure of the runway was for safety concerns, the effects would be too huge on the already troubled sector.

Pam said that the Kaduna airport would not be able to cope with the traffic that would be coming in, in terms of all the fixed-wing aircraft.

He said: “It is going to be a serious dislocation of the nexus of our air travel system. Every major airport in the country connects to Abuja and Lagos. So, to have that place completely shut down for six weeks will be a huge blow to travelling public. They will be the ones that will be the worst of.”

The chairman recalled that the John F. Kennedy in New York, United States, one of the busiest airports in the world, does its maintenance at night when the traffic is least and never completely shut down a runway.

Aviation Security Consultant, Group Capt. John Ojikutu, said that the choice of Kaduna for air traffic diversion would scare most of the foreign airlines away.

Ojikutu said that with the security issues in the northern parts of the country, none of the American and European airlines will fly to Kaduna.

He said: “My only worry is that they want to use Kaduna for traffic and I ask the question, why can’t they use Minna? Minna may not be as good as Kaduna, but a 737 can land in Minna.
“For them to want to use Kaduna for foreign airlines, I have my doubts that the airlines will go there. It is for security reasons. The way security is built in the north is different from how we have built it here.

“If the people that are creating problems all over the place want to draw world attention to themselves, they will go to that place and create the problem. The Americans and European airlines have their minds on that. They do not want a situation where they would be brought into the conflicts, in such a way as they will be used as scapegoats. So, they would rather go to Lagos to land,” he said.

The Minister of State, Aviation, Hadi Sirika, will on Thursday engage the industry’s stakeholders on issues arising from the proposed closure of the airport.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Sirika, who disclosed this in a statement issued in Abuja yesterday, said the meeting would afford him the opportunity to officially inform the sector’s players of the decision.

Meanwhile, despite the challenges facing the nation’s aviation sector, it has attained a higher level of rating which now places it among the world leaders in terms of safety.