Air Passengers Drop At Abuja Airport Ahead Of New Year Celebration

The Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, on Sunday recorded a drop in passenger movement ahead of the New year celebration.

Most passengers in the past few days suffered flight delays and cancellations due to bad weather conditions across the country.

A correspondent who was at the airport on Sunday, reports that few flight announcements were made while fewer passengers were seen at the arrival and departure sections.

Domestic airlines booking and check-in counters were virtually empty.

Some airline staff who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the most of the passengers traveled between Friday and Saturday.

They said that though there was the issue of non-availability of money, the day of the new year celebration had made it convenient for people to travel without rush.

Some of them also disclosed that they had not been operating full flight because of the number of passengers had dropped.

The Station Manager, Azman Air, Mr Abdullahi Saroke, said that only few flights had departed or arrived the airport since morning.

Saroke said that bad weather condition was also another factor that had also affected flights, adding that Yola and Maiduguri flights were yet take off because of poor visibility as at the time of filing this report.

He said that the `weekend before the New Year holiday,’ was also responsible for the low traffic.

According to him, “Azman’s Lagos flight for 1:00 pm will not depart till evening because there are no passengers on ground.

“What is going to happen is that we are going to operate a connecting flight by combining passengers from Yola, Maiduguri and Abuja on one flight to Lagos.

“Many airlines are also doing same because it is not economically good to fly few passengers on board.

People are still on holidays and as such we were not expecting much but from Tuesday, we will be having much of arrivals, “he said.

Saroke said that 2017 was not really a good year for airlines while expressing hope that 2018 would be a better year for airlines in Nigeria.