Market News

By  Abdullateef Aliyu

Following persistent delays and cancellations of flights in the Nigerian airspace, operators have appealed to passengers to bear with them.

They blamed recent flight delays on inclement weather, saying the safety of passengers is the first consideration in airline operation.

Vice-President of the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), Mr. Allen Onyema who spoke on the sidelines of the League of Airports and Aviation Correspondents (LAAC) annual conference said no airline worth its salt would deliberately inconvenience its passengers by delaying or cancelling flights.

Onyema said, “Every aircraft every day is planned to go to certain routes. Once anything happens on one of those planned routes, it would affect the others. It is like that all over the world.”

The Managing Director, Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NIMeT), Prof. Mansur Matazu, stressed the need for airlines to work more with the airlines in the area of getting accurate weather information.

“The accuracy of our forecast is more than 90 percent and it is to provide this forecast at the airport level. The beginning of the rainy season in the South is associated with thunderstorms and stormy weather which we have passed. What we are now, in the South-West, like Lagos and other states; we are experiencing anomalous August weather. We have been seeing this since last week in July. So there is a lot of window of less rainfall activity but it will remain cloudy.