Ending Domestic Flight Delays, Cancellations

Recently the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority held a fruitful meeting with domestic airlines on how to mitigate flight delays and cancellations. Chinedu Eze x-rays the challenges faced by airlines and travellers, and proffers better ways the challenges can be tackled

What is obvious is that those who are conversant with domestic air travel in Nigeria know that flight delays and cancellations have always been part of the bouquet, even as airlines come, operate and some go under, a development that has adversely affected air travel in Nigeria.

This is a major problem in Nigeria because it is caused by hydra-headed factors, and there has not been any collective effort by government and its agencies in the aviation industry to tackle effectively. 

In his opening address during a recent stakeholders’ meeting, the Director General, NCAA, Captain Chris Najomo, disclosed that in September 2024, airlines operated 5,291 flights with 2, 434 delays and 79 cancellations and in October 2024, domestic airlines recorded 5,513 flights with 2,791 delays and 111 cancellations. 

Najomo frowned at the incessant delays and cancellations and expressed his determination to find the solution to the problem. 

The Director General said the authority would put measures in place to checkmate the actions of unruly passengers at the airports.

 He said NCAA would not condone passengers beating up airline staff when flights are cancelled or delayed due to bad weather or at any other time and insisted that any passenger who goes against the rules at the airport would be persecuted. 

Addressing the airlines during the meeting, Najomo said airlines must abide by the conditions provided by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Regulation (NCAR) in making sure that passengers are efficiently served. 

He acknowledged that delays and cancellations could sometimes be inevitable, but noted that poor management of these disruptions exacerbates the problem.

According to him, it is the responsibility of airlines to ensure that every disruption, whether due to operational, technical, or weather-related challenges, is handled with the utmost professionalism and regard for passengers’ rights. 

Najomo lamented the high rate of flight cancellation and delays, saying that actions must be taken to improve timely operations, from the airlines to the provision of infrastructure at the airports.

Flight Delays and Cancellations

A lot of factors contribute to flight delays and flight cancellations in Nigeria. Most often, what leads to flight cancellation is when an airline cannot operate to certain airports known as sunset airports. Some airports close at 6pm because they do not have airfield lighting or no personnel to man the airports during the night. Some airports that have such facility are also closed because of the cost of sustaining their operations in the night. It costs more money to open the airports in the night due to high cost of fuel. Power outages by public power supply has made it necessary that at critical moments, airports have to rely on secondary power supply, which is generator. It costs so much to fuel these generators these days; so, airport management finds it economically challenging to provide service in the night, except the international airports in Kano, Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.

Airlines fly to these sunset airports and they try in their scheduling to serve these airports during the day but sometimes delays caused by factors that emerge during the course of their operations snowball and force the airlines to push down the flights to dusk and when they cannot be guaranteed safe landing they cancel the flights.

Another major factor for flight cancellation is AOG (aircraft on ground). When an aircraft already scheduled for flight service through the day develops fault and it has to be grounded; all the flights scheduled after the grounding of the aircraft will be affected and this may lead to the cancellation of flights. Then weather plays its role and occasionally leads to the cancellation of flights; but weather causes most of the delays during harmattan and in the rainy season due to thunderstorm.

Other Factors

Industry stakeholder who is currently the Managing Director, Flight and Logistics Solutions Limited, Amos Akpan, identified factors responsible for flight delays. He noted that causes of flight delay cuts across all organisations and institutions in the industry.

“The Following institutions and players in the aviation industry contribute to flight delays and cancellations: airlines, the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), the Federal Airport Airports Authority of Nigeria (NCAA), Nigeria Aviation Handling Company Plc (NAHCO), Skyway Aviation Handling Company Plc (SAHCO), Nigerian Customs Service, the National Drug law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) the Nigeria Air Force, police, the Nigeria Immigration Service, NAFDAC, Nigeria Quarantine Service, NCAA, the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NIMET), fuel suppliers, passengers, cargo agents and telecommunication companies (TELCOs).

“Unless we accept the impact of each of the above mentioned in the efficient delivery of service to their consumers, we will remain in the complaint and blame zones without growing.My point is, if you know what each contributor is doing wrong, bring it to their notice, and ensure appropriate solution is applied to fix it. For instance, the immigration is fixing the menace of manual processes with the corruption it harbours. Our Honourable Minister of Aviation is fixing the bottlenecks against dry lease of aircraft by Nigeria airlines.

“Let each agency, each service provider, including the airlines take responsibility for their role in these flight delays. Those that pretend they don’t know how their activities contribute to flight delays should be told. Step one is knowing how they are part of the problem. Step two is knowing the solution. Step three is the sector control by regulations. This step three brings all players into a performance level required in the industry; otherwise known as minimum required level of service delivery. Nobody and No organisation should operate in the industry below this minimum required level of service delivery. The airlines cannot magically produce excellent services in an environment where other inputs are inefficiently served. For example, at Lagos airport, an airline estimates that it will take forty minutes to fuel an aircraft, therefore plans with flight and ground operations to release same aircraft to operate next flight scheduled in sixty minutes,” Akpan said.

Akpan added that the fuel companies knew and they try to supply fuel on time. Then, some unusual police check point causes road traffic jam on the airport service road. This could cause extra two hours delay – unplanned. This type of unplanned delays happens from most inputs to producing a service – a scheduled flight.

“Then there are more obvious core industry factors like Air Traffic due to VIP movement, the weather and deficient aeronautical infrastructures. There is also the airline ground and flight operations personnel that are not pre-emptive and are inefficient planners. As ‘puff puff experts,’ we’ve been around the industry both within and outside Nigeria to observe that the best planning for flight operations is to envelope every activity in an operations specification submitted to and approved by NCAA. It is from this ops specs at your platform that you adjust to manage other odds you come across in your daily field operational activities. Finally, records of every activity stored and shared with regulatory agencies become data. If such data is available it would help us place number of delays and cancellations caused by each institution or department. Unfortunately, the agencies that should collate these records into reputable data for planning and analysis always present figures that vary amongst diverse sources,” Akpan further noted.

Unruly Passengers’ Behaviour

During the NCAA meeting with airlines, time was taken to talk about the unruly behaviour of most air passengers. Speaking at the meeting Najomo agreed that it was only in Nigeria that passengers who are not satisfied with the turn of events in their bid to travel, either their flight is delayed or cancelled, embark on violent protest, beat up airlines staff, sometimes airport management staff and destroy equipment belonging to the airlines.

What is unsavoury about this is that air travellers have been doing this for several years but the system has been unable to stop them. But when those passengers travel to Accra, Ghana or Lome, Togo they become docile and abide by the rules. Some industry experts posit that the passengers embody the total dissatisfaction with how the Nigerian government is run and they ventilate their frustration on the airlines. Some attribute it to poor communication system on the part of the airlines, but there is an inclination for an average Nigerian to believe that there is no sincerity in whatever airlines and government representatives are doing. If an airline, for example, says that due to bad weather it would have to delay flight by two hours, some passengers will not believe that it is due to weather, but would assume another reason and begin to act out a violent reaction in response to their assumption.

A research student investigating why Nigerian passengers fight airline staff when there is flight disruption, said that he had interviewed passengers in one of the flights, which was delayed before it took off, but the five persons he interviewed gave different reasons why the flight was delayed.The airline said it delayed the flight due to bad weather. One person echoed what the airline said with inclination of agreement while three believed it was not due to weather but the fifth person said the airline went to bring a plane because the one they were supposed to fly had broken down. All these assumptions can evoke violent protest against the airline.

Industry analyst and consultant, Sindy foster, observed that unruly behavior of passengers and failure to obey rules sometimes lead to flight delay and “another flight going to the same destination is called; some passengers become unruly and block other passengers of the announced flight from boarding, thereby keeping the aircraft on ground for long periods and delaying operations to other destinations.”

Inadequate Infrastructure

Inadequate facilities at the airports could lead to flight delays and this has happened many times, especially at peak hours and during the Yuletide season, when many people travel at the same time.

Passenger and baggage screening capacity at many domestic airports, especially at both domestic terminals in Lagos and in Abuja is very poor and insufficient to serve the numbers of passengers that get processed through these airports. This issue causes delays on a regular basis at peak times and forces aircraft to stay on ground for longer periods, delaying those particular flights and further scheduled flights of the affected aircraft.

Solution

The Director General of NCAA, Captain Chris Najomo, enjoined airlines to strictly follow the weather report emanating from NIMET and abide by such reports in scheduling their flights. He said that if there is one week weather report, such could guide the airlines in scheduling flights to various destinations. Najomo also promised to take decisive decision on unruly passengers to curtail their excesses at the airports.

The Managing Director of FAAN, Mrs. Olubunmi Kuku, at the meeting, assured that efforts were being made to curtail the movement of birds around the airports because bird strike is major reason why aircraft scheduled for service are grounded.

Stakeholders also called on FAAN and NAMA to recruit more personnel in order to have adequate number of workers to maximise available facilities and equipment for a more efficient service, which will significantly curtail disruptions in flight service.