Sallah: Airlines record low passenger traffic
Contrary to the usual passenger traffic surge during festive periods, domestic airlines did not record any significant increase during the sallah celebrations.
The PUNCHng gathered that there was no significant difference between passenger traffic before the two-day holiday and during the period.
Airline sources who spoke with our correspondent said passenger movement last week was higher but gradually dropped from Monday, just before the holiday.
It was gathered that airlines had mostly between 70 per cent and 80 per cent passenger load on their flights, while on some northern routes, some flights increased from 100 or 110 passengers to between 115 and 120, unlike what they used to have in the past years during festive periods.
The Media and Communications Manager of Dana Air, Kingsley Ezenwa, said, “There has been nothing in passenger traffic to show that we are in a festive period. The traffic has no difference at all in some routes and moderate increase in others; in fact, I can say traffic is low. People even travelled more last week than they travelled this period.”
The Corporate Communications Manager, Air Peace, Chris Iwarah, stated that despite the fact that the airline only started flights to the northern cities of Kano and Yola a few months ago, and could not compare between this year and 2017, there was only a marginal increase in passenger traffic during the period.
He said, “There was no difference except traffic going to the north, which was not significant; no difference with traffic to the southern part of the country. People have been travelling along these routes normally. The traffic was within the North but marginal.
“This is the first time we are doing Kano and Yola operations during this period having started only six months ago; we also started Kaduna only three weeks ago, but there was no significant increase.”
Some of the airlines said they had prepared for the usual surge while the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria had issued a statement before the holiday, stating that it had made plans in anticipation of passenger traffic during the Sallah break.
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