Tough time for travellers over high air fares

At a time demands for air travel usually increase, travellers have faced constraints over spike in air fares amidst paucity of flights in the domestic travel market.

Daily Trust can report that air fares have gone astronomically high in the last 48 hours even as there are no available flights for anyone who wants to travel today (Thursday) especially on the busiest Lagos-Abuja routes.

Checks show that most flights have been fully booked on various routes like Lagos-Abuja; Lagos-Port Harcourt; Lagos-Enugu, Lagos-Kano, among others.

For those who booked over the weekend, they succeeded in securing some seats after many tries even at an exorbitant price.

From last week, it was gathered that prices of tickets have gone up due to the volume of online bookings ahead of the Easter festivity.

For instance, as at last week, the Lagos-Abuja flight which used to be less than N30,000 has gone up to between N54,000 and N60,000. The route is the busiest in the domestic travel market.

Daily Trust reports that other hinterlands that are not as busy as Lagos-Abuja or Abuja-Kano are even more expensive.

As of the time of filing this report, Aero Contractors’ Lagos-Abuja flight for Thursday had a seat left charging N90,312 per passenger.

The private terminal of the Murtala Muhammed Airport (MMA2) in Lagos yesterday was bubbling passengers, one of them, Mr Ikechukwu Isaac said he booked ahead of time but still paid over N50,000 for the Lagos-Abuja flight.

He said, “I think this is as a result of the festive season and I also observed that there are few flights available.”

A travel expert, Mr Olumide Ohunayo, said, “Make no mistake, there are high seasons in transportation and this is applicable to all means of transportation. During this period, the capacity that is always available during the normal season becomes constrained.”

A spokesperson with Dana Air, Kingsley Ezenwa said the rush is expected due to the festivity, and that more flights have been deployed especially on Lagos and Abuja routes.

Air Peace announced similar action on Tuesday, but the temporary suspension of Azman Air on some routes worsened the situation.

However, Azman on its Twitter handle yesterday posted its expectation from the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).

“As we get to the final stages of resolving our findings with NCAA, Azman Air will not rest on its past laurels but will continue to invest the quality effort to improving its Safety Processes thereby setting a standard in Nigeria Aviation. Expect good news.”