16 Nigerian airports dormant in 2014 – Report
Of the 20 airports being managed by the
Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, four accounted for over 80 per
cent of the domestic passenger traffic in the second and third quarters
of 2014, the remaining 16 recorded little or no activity during the
period under review.
Latest figures as contained in the
Nigerian Aviation Sector Summary Report for the two quarters showed that
the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos; Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja;
Port Harcourt Airport, Rivers State; and the Kaduna Airport handled the
highest number of passenger traffic.
The other airports were less busy, with some of them recording no passenger movement at all.
For instance, the Maiduguri airport had
no international traffic in 2014, while those in Katsina and Sokoto
reported just 13 and four passengers respectively in the second quarter
of the year.
Commenting on the development, analysts
at First Bank of Nigeria Capital Research Limited said air
transportation recorded dull growth in the period under review.
While faulting the statistics made
available by FAAN, they stated that the size of the country, the
skeletal railway network and the poor condition of most roads meant that
air travel was not the exclusive preserve of a very small minority.
“It would not be mischievous to air some
doubts about data gathering by the aviation authority. In the rebased
national accounts, air transport is a sub-sector of transportation and
storage. In Q3 2014, it expanded by 1.6 per cent year-on-year yet,
represented just 0.1 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product,” the
analysts said.
According to the report, the airport
with the greatest number of passengers travelling domestically in the
second quarter of 2014 was that in Lagos with 1,106,787 passengers or
37.15 per cent of the total. In the third quarter, the number rose by
7,129 or 0.71 per cent to 1,013,916 passengers, or 38.27 per cent of the
domestic total.
It stated that the second highest number
of domestic bound passengers travelled through the Abuja airport, with
845,243 passengers, or 31.19 per cent of the total in the second
quarter.
Quarter on quarter, this showed a rise
of 143,944 passengers or 20.53 per cent from quarter one, only to
decline by 57,261 passengers or 6.82 per cent in quarter three so that
the total number of passengers stood at 787,622 or 29.73 per cent of the
total.
The Port Harcourt airport, with 314,176
passengers, or 11.59 per cent of the total, had the third largest number
of passengers travelling on the domestic routes.
The report added that the greatest
positive growth in the third quarter came from Kaduna, which recorded an
increase of 11,427 passengers or 28.94 per cent from the 39,485
passengers or 1.46 per cent of the total for the second quarter.
Punch
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