•Return ticket to South-South, South-East hit N600,000
•Keyamo seeks competition to down airfares
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has said that airlines around the world paid about $60.4 billion as taxes and charges to governments in 2024.
This was as the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, stated that the ministry was in talks with airlines to determine how they could reduce the high fares this yuletide.
Return tickets on South-East and South-South routes have increased to between N500,000 and N600,000 for economy class seats, as the festive season approaches, searches by The Guardian have revealed.
IATA, in its verified X handle, monitored by The Guardian, quoted the $60.4 billion figure yesterday. It said the charges and taxes added to airline fares payable by passengers in the previous year.
“Air transport passengers paid $60.4 billion in ticket taxes and charges in 2024. These taxes, added to airline fares, are collected by carriers and passed on to governments.”
Also, in recent weeks, return tickets on flights departing from Lagos, Abuja, and some other major routes to the South-South and South-East regions have shot up astronomically.
Routes such as Asaba, Enugu, Port Harcourt, Benin City, Imo, Anambra, Ebonyi, and Akwa Ibom are priced high by various domestic carriers operating to these airports. For instance, checks on the Air Peace flight to Asaba Airport from Lagos for December travel indicated an airfare of N541,000.
Airfares from Lagos to Asaba on Air Peace stand at N432,700, while return to Lagos is N108,100.
Also, further checks on the airline’s website revealed that there was no flight out of Lagos to Enugu Airport on December 22.
While the flight from Enugu to Lagos’ airfare is priced at N102,100.
For United Nigeria Airlines (UNA), a one-way ticket for the same December on the Lagos-Asaba route is set at N400,000.05, while a return flight from Asaba to Lagos for December 29 is fixed at N135,500.
On the same UNA, Lagos-Benin is fixed at N400,000.05, while Benin-Lagos for December 29 is fixed at N200,000. Also, the same route is priced at N335,500 for January 1, 2026, back to Lagos.
The Director, Public Affairs and Consumer Protection, Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Michael Achimugu, said no authority regulates airfares anywhere in the world.
Achimugu explained that airfares were determined by market forces, seasons and operational costs of airlines.
He added: “For Detty December, owners of apartments have raised their rent by over 400 per cent of the regular rates. Food costs increase during the season too. Is any of this fair? I would say no.
“But we cannot regulate airfares. All the people complaining about these fares are also doing the same thing in their businesses. We at the NCAA are not exempt from the harshness of the fares. So, if it was possible to force it down, we would do so. But we cannot.”
He emphasised that only competition, lower taxes and more affordable fuel, among others, could force down the cost of air travel, stressing that the minister was doing all within his power to address the situation from the government side.
In a terse message to The Guardian, Keyamo also said the government was encouraging competition in the airline sub-sector to force down high airfares.
He said: “We are speaking with the airlines to find out what their issues are, but this is a deregulated industry, so we cannot fix prices. What we are trying to do is to encourage competition to force down prices.”
But the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of UNA, Osita Okonkwo, debunked the report of discriminatory airfares against South-East and South-South travellers.
He expressed that this imbalance compelled airlines to ferry near-empty aircraft back, either to Lagos in December or to the South-East in January.
