The month of August has recorded an impressive decline in flight cancellations across all regions. The Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and Middle East & Africa areas saw a five to 37 per cent decline in regional flight cancellations, while Latin America saw a modest six per cent increase.

This research, which was conducted by Cirium, a data analytics company, also revealed that new regional airline leaders emerged as a result of this reduction in disruptions, and on-time performance was improved.

While the total number of flights cancelled in Africa and the Middle East declined by five per cent with only 1,748 recorded cancelled flights as compared to 1,849 in July, Europe had 6,941 flights cancelled in August, which was a decrease of 37 per cent from 10,976 in July, further highlighting the impact that the global Crowdstrike IT event had on air travel in July.

Asia-Pacific saw the greatest number of flight cancellations in all regions, but in August there were only 23,063 cancellations, down from 26,990 the month before. Also, August saw a recovery in the North American region following a 24 per cent drop in the number of cancelled flights as 17,765 flights were cancelled overall, down from 23,393 in July.

Before now, former Acting Vice Chairman of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), Alhaji Adamu Abdullahi, had said that passengers should be carried along when flights are delayed in Nigeria.

“We shall be very thorough in this engagement and other noticeable infractions in the aviation sector, particularly about airline operators treating passengers as if they don’t matter. It is sad to just cancel or delay flights without carrying passengers along, and if you must cancel flights or cause it to be delayed beyond a reasonable time, such operators must show us evidence of operational difficulties,” Abdullahi said.