The National Association of Nigerian Travel Agencies (NANTA) on Thursday accused foreign airlines of exploiting Nigerian travellers with high airfares.
NANTA also clarified that foreign airlines are not selling air tickets in dollars to their Nigerian passengers contrary to the claim by the Minister of Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika.
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President of NANTA, Mrs. Susan Akporiaye, in a chat with newsmen said the delay in the repatriation of the funds by foreign carriers is responsible for the exploitation of the Nigerian air travellers.
She stated that the Federal Government’s refusal to allow foreign airlines to repatriate funds was a violation of the Bilateral Air Service Agreement (BASA).
The NANTA boss however said this should not be an excuse to impose high airfares on the Nigerian travellers.
She added that despite the release of $265 million by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) from the trapped funds, the airlines were yet to open their lower inventories, thereby leading to high fare rates by air travellers.
Akporiaye alleged that these high fares were targeted at only Nigerian travellers.
She added: ‘’It is sad that Nigerians have to buy tickets to the tune of N4 million and be charged as high as N1 million to change travel dates even on tickets bought before this crisis began.
“This is unacceptable, exploitative, hostile to the survival of Nigerian aviation downstream sector and we call for sanity and return to the best inventory practices and deployment.’’
Akporiaye also appealed to the government as a matter of urgency to open further windows of engagement by calling for a meeting with all parties involved, which should include the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and NANTA.
However, she denied the claim by Sirika that some of the operators were selling air tickets in dollars.
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