Scarcity of aviation fuel hits airlines

The scarcity of Jet A1 popularly known as aviation fuel has hit the various domestic airlines with many passengers being stranded across the major airports, Tribune has reported.

The newspaper said the scarcity, which started since Monday but became more pronounced in Abuja, forced some of the airlines to cancel or merge their flight operations on Tuesday.

The paper reported that the reason for the scarcity of the fuel was not known, by the time of filing the report, but that most of the airlines were not able to purchase fuel in Lagos airport and Abuja.

Aero Airlines, for instance, had to fly to Kaduna Airport on Monday primarily because of fuel and later returned to Lagos to airlift passengers to their destinations.

Hundreds of passengers were noticed at the Murtala Mohammed Airport Two, MMA2, Lagos and the General Aviation Terminal, GAT, Lagos as they could not secure flights to their destinations while some of the aircraft, which had departed Lagos for other airports could not return to base because of lack of adequate supply of the commodity.

Some airlines, which managed to operate, ended up having their passengers delayed for several more hours while others cancelled their flights outright.

The scarcity and high price of the aviation fuel have been a source of concern to airlines and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority NCAA both challenges affect the bottom-line of indigenous airlines.

At the moment in Nigeria, aviation fuel still sells for between N170 and N190 per litre depending on the litres an operator is buying and where it is buying from.