Market News

BY Victoria Moores

Nigerian carrier Ibom Air is planning to add two or three new Central African destinations in 2025, building on its sole existing intra-African route between Lagos (Nigeria) and Accra (Ghana). Local government-owned Ibom Air flies to seven destinations—six domestic and one intra-African—using a fleet of seven CRJ900s and two Airbus A220-300s. “We’re breaking into regional [flights],” Ibom Air Executive Director and COO George Uriesi told Aviation Week. “We started with Lagos-Accra about a year ago and, from next year, we’re going to expand to two or three other regional destinations.” Uriesi said these three central African destinations will be added during 2025, but he declined to name the destinations just yet. 

The routes will be “intertwined,” meaning they will operate as stops, rather than direct services. Ibom Air has nine more A220-300s scheduled to arrive by 2028, and the company is planning to transition to an all-A220 fleet. Uriesi said Ibom Air has an average load factor of nearly 90%, and the CRJ900s are too small to meet the demand. 

 The A220s have sufficient range for Ibom Air to fly to destinations like Cairo (Egypt), Cape Town (South Africa) and Casablanca (Morocco). But, unlike other African carriers, Ibom Air has no ambitions of branching out into long-haul flights. “Let the Ethiopians and the Egyptians do all of that,” Uriesi said. “We will stay in Africa.” Ibom Air’s priority is maximizing load factors and frequencies, rather than chasing market share or new destinations. 

Six of Ibom Air’s destinations are domestic within Nigeria, operating alongside one regional route to Ghana. “Our strategy is not to expand and stretch ourselves thin but to maintain our footprint where we have frequencies. “We have seven destinations right now, and we’ve kept those seven destinations now for the last three years,” he said. “It doesn’t follow that we have more airplanes, so let’s go to other places. 

No, we expand granularly and we provide frequencies.” Ibom Air does not have any codeshares, but it previously had an interline partnership with now-defunct Nigerian carrier Dana Air. Uriesi is keen to set up new interline partnerships, giving partners access to its Nigerian domestic feeder flights.

“We have a number of potential [interline] partners that we’ve spoken to—a number of international carriers—who have either come to us, or we’ve gone to them. We’re busy discussing, and we’re nearly at the point now where we will actually sign up with them,” Uriesi said. “I’m sure, by next year, we’ll start signing off.”