05 May 2016, Lagos – The current scarcity and high cost of aviation fuel, coupled with the weak value of the naira have been identified as the main factors preventing the growth of the aviation sector.
While fuel alone gulps half of the operating costs, other challenges like the high cost of providing standard air transport services, increasing demand for customer satisfaction by air travellers and rising cost of operation, are giving the operators hard times, the Director-General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Capt. Muktar Usman, said.
Usman, while delivering a paper entitled: ‘The acts of promoting a sustainable air transport economy while maintaining high level of aviation safety standards,’ at the Airport Business Summit and Expo, said that aviation fuel, otherwise called Jet A1, constitutes between 40 and 50 per cent of the airlines’ direct operating costs, which he said was having an untold effect on the performance and profit of domestic airline operators due to the supply crisis in the country.
Despite the astronomical crash in the price of crude oil from over $100 per barrel over a year ago to about $44 in the market today, domestic airline operators still purchase a litre of aviation fuel at higher price of N120 per litre, depending on the airport, marketer and the litres such an airline is purchasing.
- The Guardian