NCAA Threatens Sanctions against Airlines over Price Fixing

Chinedu Eze

The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has said that it will sanction airlines against price fixing or any gang up by local and international carriers to fix price of flight tickets without its knowledge.

NCAA’s Director General, Captain Musa Nuhu, made this known at the 46th Annual General Meeting of the National Association of the Nigeria Travel Agencies (NANTA) in Kano at the weekend.

 Nuhu, who was reacting to the theme of the AGM, “Antitrust: Opportunities Available for Protection of the Nigeria Travel Market,” said the regulatory agency had taken some steps to protect the customers and travel agencies in this regard and promised to publicise the sanctions so far taken to forestall possible gang up and price fixing in the industry.

He described antitrust as, when a group of people providing services come together and gang up and fix prices to the detriment of the travelling public and those who are using these services and assure the travel agencies that commercial airlines in Nigeria would be closely monitored to ensure that there was no price fixing.

He reiterated that there were regulations in place that prohibited such practices and efforts were ongoing to ensure such regulations were implemented.

“The travelling public can be rest assured that we are working on them,” Captain Musa said.
Nuhu said that in addition to ensuring that flights operate safely in Nigeria, NCAA planned to revive the sector after it was economically ravaged by the Coronavirus pandemic with the objective to make the cost of flight tickets affordable to average Nigerian citizens.

“Significant part of our functions are economic regulatory functions,” he said.
Nuhu disclosed at the event that the NCAA was working in collaboration with the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) to ensure that airlines are not allowed to fix prices of their tickets.  “We are working together for the benefits of the industry, we don’t believe in blowing our trumpets,” he added.

Airlines had indicated that the price of aviation fuel might rise further before the end of the month due to its scarcity, while airlines have continued to delay and cancel flights due to the scarcity of Jet A1 in the last two months.

Also, it was gathered that fuel marketers now ration the product for airlines due to its scarcity.
According to a fuel marketer, most of the domestic airlines could not purchase the fuel because of debts, stressing that “the airlines know what to do.”

He explained that the fuel marketers only decided to withhold supply to the debtor airlines.
Speaking on the high price, the official attributed this to the rise in foreign exchange and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

He said the truth “is airlines owe the marketers. They are collecting money upfront from passengers, but they are not paying the marketers. I don’t want to mention names.”