Travel News

BY  Dayo Adenubi

Domestic flights may experience some hiccups in their routine operations as the Nigerian Air Traffic Controllers Association embarked on a two-day industrial action beginning from today.

A statement from NATCA on Tuesday disclosed that air traffic controllers would slow down traffic flow and departure time by 20 minutes on domestic flights at the four major airports in Lagos, Abuja, Port-Harcourt, and Kano.

The statement said, “It will be recalled that an Air Traffic Controller, Anniekan Effiong slumped and died early hours on Monday while on duty at Abuja tower. This informed an emergency meeting of the executive council of NATCA yesterday.

“The Executive Council of our noble profession met yesterday and discuss extensively the state of ATC operations vis-a-vis our collective survival within the system.”

NATCA complained as part of its resolutions from the meeting that the ATC system and its operations operated in disregard of the welfare of ATCOs. According to them, the managers of the system had failed to make adjustments which had “resulted in one death too many.”

They said, “Commencing from 6 am Nigerian time today, 23rd November 2021 all ATC units nationwide should operate flow control. All departures should be spaced at 20 minutes intervals. All international flights are exempted.

“That all ATCOs should endeavour to be on high alert and should there be a need to escalate this exercise beyond flow control, we are ready to further such actions. That this exercise will be for two days and will be strictly executed at the four major airports with strict coordination from adjacent aerodromes before any startup is issued.”

NATCA solicited the support of its members to ensure its message was sent out to appropriate authorities.

(Bloomberg) -- For the first time in three decades, Queen Elizabeth II is losing one of her many realms.

On Nov. 30, Barbados, in the eastern Caribbean, will be removing the British monarch as its head of state and installing Governor General Sandra Mason as president.

“This is monumental from our point of view,” Suleiman Bulbulia, a member of the committee tasked with analyzing the change, said in a phone interview. “This is the next step in our journey -- cutting the umbilical cord that connects us to the U.K.”

The move is largely symbolic, as Barbados has been a sovereign nation since 1966. But the transition underscores the growing independent streak in the Caribbean -- home to nine of the 16 commonwealth realms, sovereign countries that have Queen Elizabeth as their head of state. 

“The time has come to fully leave our colonial past behind,” Governor General Mason said last year, when the transition was announced. “Barbadians want a Barbadian head of state.”

Leaving the commonwealth won’t affect economic conditions on the island of 287,000 people, but it will be an important psychological boost, Bulbulia said. While the names of some government agencies -- The Royal Barbados Police Force, for example -- will need to be changed, the costs of the transition will be minimal, he added.

Tourism-Dependent 

Barbados, along with other tourism-dependent economies in the region, suffered a deep slump during the pandemic, and is grappling with one of the world’s heaviest debt burdens. The economy is expected to grow 3.3% this year, after collapsing 18% in 2020, according to the International Monetary Fund. 

The last nation to leave the commonwealth realm was Mauritius in 1992. But Jamaica, the Bahamas, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines have all considered ditching the monarchy. Officials in the British Virgin Islands, a British overseas territory recently told The Daily Telegraph that they’re preparing to hold a referendum on removing the Queen and becoming a republic.

Guy Hewitt, a former High Commissioner of Barbados in London, said Prime Minister Mia Mottley lost an opportunity to consolidate the island’s democracy by not calling for a referendum on the issue.

He’s also among those who had been in favor of postponing the move until the Queen had passed on the crown to her heirs. 

“The Queen is held in such high regard and has been an icon of the 20th Century,” Hewitt said. “I wouldn’t want this to be perceived as a slight against her.”

BY  Gilbert Ekugbe 

The acting Director General, Infrastructure Construction Regulatory Commission (ICRC), Mr. Mike Ohiani, has stated that the federal government is expected to generate over N12.4 billion within the next four years courtesy of the introduction of e-ticketing solution on the Lagos-Ibadan standard train service.

He also added that over N9.6 billion will be generated from the Warri-Itakpe standard train service within the period under review.

Ohiani at the official Outline Business Case (OBC) presentation on the Lagos-Ibadan Standard Train Service and the Warri-Itakpe Standard Train Service to Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) in Lagos, said the overall scope of the project is for the designing, financing, building, operation, managing the secured e-ticketing solution hardware and software for passenger station on Lagos-Ibadan standard train service and the Warri-Itakpe.

He said the e-ticket solution will make traveling experience for passengers very easy, adding that in the comfort of passengers’ homes they can purchase their tickets, while also pointing out that it would also provide security services and promote efficiency in rail transportation.

“We are here this morning to provide the certificate showing that the project is bankable and starting from Monday, we will secure a credible concessionaire that will manage the e-ticketing solution. We want to assure Nigeria that once this project is concluded, they will get efficient services and there will be improvement in the nation’s railway transportation system,” he added.

Earlier, the Managing Director, Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), Mr. Fidet Okhiria, said since the introduction of e-ticketing, revenue generation has gone up drastically either by encouraging users to use the train as leakages have been blocked while the fear of ticket racketeering has also reduced by the e-ticketing and its technology. “It cannot be perfect in one day as we are reviewing it on daily, weekly and monthly basis to try to improve on what we are doing,”he added.

BY  Marcy Nicholson, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. barges carrying gasoline are headed to Canada’s west coast to deliver much-needed fuel to a region cut off from the rest of the country after last week’s rainstorms brought flooding and landslides that damaged transportation links.

Gasoline is in short supply in parts of Canada’s westernmost province of British Columbia including in Vancouver, home to the nation’s largest port and the country’s third-largest city. The arriving barges will help alleviate a fuel shortage in a province where some gas stations have been forced to close temporarily due to empty pumps.

The heavy damage from rainstorms washed away parts of major highways and blocked railways leading east, essentially isolating Vancouver from the rest of the country. That is creating problems getting supplies into the area, and panic buying that has emptied some grocery store shelves and added stress on fuel supplies. B.C.’s provincial government has imposed a maximum purchase of 30 liters (7.9 gallons) for drivers.

“We have been sourcing supply from other jurisdictions as you know, from Alberta for example and also from south of the border,” Mike Farnworth, B.C.’s public safety minister, said Monday in a press conference. “There are some barges that are actually on the way to get here with fuel.”

Pipeline Repairs

Operators at the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which carries crude from Alberta to B.C., are “working around the clock” to ensure that work on the disrupted conduit and its ability to move oil is “done as quickly as possible,” Farnworth said.

Enbridge Inc. said on Sunday that it raised capacity at its Westcoast Pipeline after the conduit was temporarily shut just ahead of the flooding.

The tracks of Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Railway Co., the country’s main lines that transport nearly all rail cargo in B.C. including goods ranging from lumber to grain to the Port of Vancouver, have been closed for a week.

CP Rail will reopen its tracks between the B.C. Interior city of Kamloops and Vancouver by midday Tuesday after 30 locations were damaged, the company said in a statement. Twenty of those locations experienced “significant loss of infrastructure.”

“The following 10 days will be critical,” CP Rail Chief Executive Officer Keith Creel said. “As we move from response to recovery to full service resumption, our focus will be on working with customers to get the supply chain back in sync.”

While parts of major highways reopen, B.C. Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Rob Fleming said it will be weeks for temporary repairs to be made to the key Coquihalla Highway and months before permanent repairs are made as the country heads into winter.

“We fully understand how important the Coquihalla is to our province for east-west travel and particularly for the movement of goods,” Fleming told reporters in a Monday press conference. “Work is getting underway on temporary repairs and construction access that will allow traffic to start moving.”

BY Christopher Jasper, Bloomberg News

Shai Weiss , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Shai Weiss said the U.K. carrier is set for a bumper Thanksgiving and Christmas but can’t predict how strong demand will be next summer.

Flights to the U.S. operated 90% full in the week after the Biden administration eased border curbs Nov. 8, opening up travel for people eager to visit friends and family over the holidays, Weiss said in response to questions from Bloomberg News at the Airlines 2021 conference in London.

Weiss expects load factors in the 60% to 70% range over the rest of the year, about 10 percentage points ahead of levels before Washington allowed fully vaccinated foreigners back into the country.

“It’s looking the best it has been for a very long time,” the CEO said. “There are certain routes, especially over the Christmas period, that are looking exceptionally strong -- New York, Miami and so forth.”

With travel into Asia still largely limited amid a slower rollout of vaccinations there, the North Atlantic should reclaim its status as the world’s leading long-haul market, Weiss said. He cautioned, though, that the majority of bookings are for flights in the next few months and offer little insight into demand next summer, when carriers will be looking to claw back lost earnings.

“There is not great visibility beyond three to six months, because people are booking close in and responding to market sentiment,” Weiss said.

Weiss said he’s focused on building up flights and isn’t dwelling on mounting infection rates and the return of lockdowns in mainland Europe, or how they might influence government policy.

“I personally don’t see the U.K. and U.S. reverting to the shutting down of borders, because cases are no longer the determining factor,” he said. “It’s really about variants of concern that are new and dominant beyond the delta variant, and we haven’t see one. It’s not the same playbook.”

Virgin Atlantic is in discussions with shareholders Richard Branson and Delta Air Lines Inc. about a 400 million-pound ($540 million) capital injection to bolster its balance sheet, a person familiar with the matter said on Nov. 20. Virgin pushed back plans for a London listing, though it remains an option.

Virgin averted collapse last year with the support of a 1.2 billion-pound rescue package from owners and lenders after the U.K. government refused the company access to state funds. Branson’s Virgin Group owns a 51% stake and Delta the rest.

The Bloomberg EMEA Airlines index fell again on Monday. The index, whose members include EasyJet Plc and Deutsche Lufthansa AG, has declined for 11 straight days.

BY  Eniola Akinkuotu

The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, on Tuesday, insisted that there was no “massacre” at the Lekki toll gate on October 20, 2020.

Mohammed, who also described the leaked report of the Lagos State panel as fake, stated this at a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday.

The nine-member panel had in its leaked report alleged that at least nine persons were killed at the Lekki toll plaza when soldiers and policemen stormed the scene to disperse protesters on October 20, 2020.

However, Mohammed described the allegations as “tales by moonlight”.

The PUNCH had earlier reported that the Justice Doris Okuwobi-led panel submitted its report to the Lagos State Government, noting that at least nine persons were confirmed dead at the Lekki toll plaza when soldiers stormed the tollgate to disperse EndSARS protesters on October 20, 2020.

The 309-page report stated, “The atrocious maiming and killing of unarmed, helpless and unresisting protesters while sitting on the floor and waving their Nigerian flags and while singing the National Anthem can be equated to a massacre in context.”

Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who received the report on Monday, constituted a Committee to bring forward a White Paper within the next two weeks to be considered by the Lagos State Executive Council.

LONDON (Reuters) - The head of Virgin Atlantic said he expected flights on its important transatlantic routes to be 60% to 70% full in the weeks running up to Christmas, and he did not expect COVID to force those borders to close again.

Shai Weiss told the Airlines UK conference that the airline still did not have great visibility on bookings more than three to six months out, but he expected the UK to U.S. route to drive the recovery as large parts of Asia remained highly restricted.

"We will be trading all the way up to Christmas, probably with a 60 to 70% load factor, which is a material improvement," he said.

Virgin Atlantic, founded by billionaire Richard Branson, is 51% owned by Branson's Virgin Group with the balance held by Delta Air Lines.

Virgin Atlantic was forced to raise cash during the pandemic to survive, including a 1.2 billion pound ($1.6 billion) rescue deal. It also axed almost half of its staff to cut costs.

Sky News reported on Saturday that Branson and Delta were in talks about a further capital raise, of around 400 million pounds, after talk of an IPO faded in uncertain market conditions. Weiss declined to comment on Monday.

($1 = 0.7456 pounds)

(Reporting by Kate Holton; editing by Paul Sandle)

(Bloomberg) -- The U.K.’s plan to lure Nobel prize laureates and other award-winning scientists through a special visa has received no applicants since it was launched in May, according to New Scientist. 

The plan was designed to make it easier for top academics in the fields of science, humanities and medicine to immigrate to the U.K. by speeding up the application process and scrapping the need for a job offer. A freedom of information request by the London-based science publication showed that no eligible candidate has so far applied.

“Having precisely zero people apply for this elitist scheme doesn’t surprise me at all,” Jessica Wade, a material scientist at Imperial College London, told New Scientist. “U.K. scientists’ access to European funding is uncertain, we’re not very attractive to European students as they have to pay international fees, and our pensions are being cut.”

More than 70 accolades qualify academics for the science visa, including Nobel prizes and the Turing Award. 

A British Home Office spokesperson defended the program, saying it’s one of several options under a Global Talent visa, which has attracted “thousands of applications” since its launch in February 2020. The Royal Academy of Engineering was satisfied with the number of applications it has recently received across various immigration routes, Director of Programmes Andrew Clark told New Scientist.

The idea of a visa for science winners was flawed as it was inherently biased, University of Manchester geoscientist Christopher Jackson told the publication.

“How we measure excellence is very nebulous,” Jackson said. “These awards favor certain people -- those who are white, male, heterosexual, cis-gendered -- and reward them based on their privilege.”

BY  Rupert Jones

HMRC property market figures reveal most subdued October for almost decade

House sales tumbled by more than half during the first few weeks after the end of the UK’s stamp duty holiday, leading to the quietest October property market for almost a decade.

After a record surge in activity earlier in the year, transactions slumped by 52% in a month to reach 76,930 in October after thousands of homebuyers rushed to complete their purchases and beat the government’s end-of-September stamp duty holiday deadline.

HM Revenue and Customs, which published the new data, said UK house sales in October were also 28% lower than in the same month last year.

HMRC said that after “significant forestalling activity” by homebuyers in September, there had been “an expected but noticeable decrease” in sales the following month. Forestalling is when advanced action is taken to prevent an anticipated event – in this case, the phasing-out of the stamp duty holiday. The threshold at which the tax begins returned to its pre-pandemic level of £125,000 on 1 October.

While last month was the slowest October since 2012, according to HMRC, other measures of the market – in particular, the various house price surveys – depict a market continuing to fire on all cylinders.

Halifax said earlier this month that UK house prices rose for a fourth month running in October, adding 0.9% to the average cost of a home and taking the typical figure above £270,000 for the first time on its measure. The rival lender Nationwide said property values increased by 0.7% in October, which meant the price of the average property had gone up by more than £30,000 since the coronavirus pandemic began in March 2020.

The HMRC data underlines the rollercoaster nature of the housing market during the past 18 months or more. It revealed that house sales in the second quarter of 2021 hit their highest quarter-two level since official records began to be compiled in this way in 2005, and also hit their highest total for any three-month period since 2007.

The figures prompted many commentators to predict that the market was heading for a winter “hibernation”.

Sarah Coles, a personal finance analyst at the investment company Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “Property sales plummeted in October, but … we always see drops like this after the end of a tax break, and we tend to see buyers hunker down for winter, so the combination of the two was always going to mean a quieter few months.”

She added: “The monthly drop looks spectacular, as sales almost halved, but this was from an enormous peak created by the final stamp duty holiday deadline. A major chunk of sales we would otherwise have expected this winter were rushed through in time for the deadline at the end of September.”

One factor that may have kept house prices buoyant is the reported shortage of homes for sale. Earlier this month, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said that “a lack of new properties being listed for sale continues to drive house prices up”.

It added that despite a rise in the number of new buyer inquiries, estate agents currently only had 37 properties on their books on average.

By Bunmi Ogunmodede, News Editor and Frank Ikpefan, Abuja

• Labour cautions govt against unilateral action

• N5,000 monthly stipend for 40m Nigerians

Going by the words of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) Group Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer (GMD/CEO) Mele Kyari, petrol will sell for between N320 and N340 per liter from February, next year.

Kyayi, who said Nigeria would be out of the subsidy regime in the first quarter of 2022, explained that subsidy would have been eliminated this year, but for certain factors that prevented it.

However, the Federal Government is planning to give N5,000 each to 40 million Nigerians, representing 40 per cent of the country’s 200 million population, next year to coincide with the take off of the subsidy removal.

The NNPCL boss spoke in Abuja at the presentation of the November edition of the World Bank Nigeria Development Update, titled: “Time for Business Unusual.”

But, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) cautioned the Federal Government against unilateral removal or stoppage of petrol subsidy regime.

The organised labour warned that removing subsidy without meeting labour’s demands will be met with stiff resistance.

Kyari said: “There will be no provision for it legally in our system, but I am also sure you will appreciate that government has a bigger social responsibility to cater for the ordinary and therefore engage in a process that will ensure that we exit in the most subtle and easy manner.”

He assured that fuel subsidy removal would definitely be achieved in 2022 as it was now fully backed by law, adding that the price of the product may range between N320 and N340 per liter.

Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai assured of governors readiness to back the plan to eliminate the subsidy regime.

El-Rufai gave the assurance as a panelist, who joined the World Bank presentation virtually, said that if the regime of fuel subsidy was not eliminated, 35 out of the 36 states of the federation may not be able to pay salaries next year.

According to him, kerosene which matters most to the masses had been regulated without any hitches, while diesel which was most important to transporters had also been regulated for a long time.

He said: “This hullabaloo about petrol is something that we must as a country have a conversation and agree that it has to end. We cannot continue to provide petroleum to our neighbouring countries, which is what we are doing.