By Louis Ibah
Domestic airlines are recording huge patronage on some local routes as most aircraft designated to fly from Lagos and Abuja airports to the South-east and South-south are fully booked on their economy class.
But the trend, occasioned mostly by a huge passenger turnout which overwhelmed the few aircraft in the fleet of most airlines, comes with its attendant hardship and frustration to numerous passengers on these routes.
Checks by Daily Sun reveal the non-availability of seats on economy class for scheduled flights from Lagos to Owerri, Uyo, Calabar, Enugu and Port Harcourt on the online portals of some of the local airlines. Notable airlines where such seats were not available included Dana Air, Air Peace, Arik Air, First Nation and Medview airlines. Where seats existed in the business class on these airlines, fares had gone up to between N45,000 and N60,000, far beyond what most passengers could afford.
In fact, there were chaotic scenes at some of the airports on these routes as passengers who could not find seats online opted to go directly to the airports to pay and board aircraft only to be told that the seats had been sold out.
Mercy Edem, a passenger who attempted to come into Lagos from Owerri yesterday, told Daily Sun how her repeated efforts to get a seat on all the airlines ended in futility. “I usually buy my tickets online, but there are no seats; all the airlines are fully booked and felt so frustrated and had to travel by road,” said Edem.
It is the same story recounted by passengers trying to come to Lagos after the yuletide from Uyo, Calabar, Port Harcourt and Enugu airports.
An airline staff explained to Daily Sun that as at the first week of December 2016, passengers had already bought return tickets on these routes, especially those who came into the country from overseas.
“We have a situation where demand has exceeded supply and it is just for tickets between January 2-4, 2017 because most of the seats had been booked and paid for as early as the first week of December 2016 by passengers, majority of them coming into the country from abroad,” said an airline ticketing official at the Lagos airport.
“What now happens is that we fly fewer passengers out of Lagos and Abuja but we now have like 99 per cent load factor when returning from some routes in the eastern part of the country. It’s the normal traffic flow during this season. But as from January 5, 2017, the situation will reverse,” the official added.
Checks by Daily Sun also revealed that airfares had gone up by 100 per cent on economy seats on some routes in the country, even on the online portals of the airlines. For instance, as at December 23, most airlines that usually advertised such low airfares online for economy tickets ranging between N18,000 and N22,000 had jacked up fares to between N28,000 and N44,000. Some air travellers who consider the new airfares exorbitant have had to opt to travel by road to their destinations within the country.