N24bn lost to flight delays in 2022 – Report

A new report compiled by some aviation professionals has estimated that over $52.7m was lost annually to flight delays.

In the analysis of the cost impact of a flight delay which has become rampant in the aviation industry released by General Sales and Solution Management Limited (GSSM), an aviation consultancy firm, the experts estimated that $4,395,748.98 is lost monthly to arrive at the yearly loss of $52,748,987.8 or N24,289,326,412.27.

The report released by the Founding Partner/Executive Director of GSSM, Babatunde Adeniji came a few days after the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) released the 2022 Executive Summary of International and Domestic Flight operations indicating massive flight delays by the domestic airlines.

The summary indicated that 11 domestic airlines operated 80,328 flights with 47,144 of the flights delayed between January and December 2022.

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The 11 airlines included Aero Contractors, Arik, Azman, Dana Air, Overland, Air Peace, Max Air, Ibom Air, United Nigeria, Green Africa and Value Jet.

Adeniji in his analysis explained that the “report card was filled in red, showing we failed as an industry to even make the pass grade.”

“Domestic airlines as a whole were only punctual for 41% of operated flights, with Ibom Air and Green Africa and Value jet (new entrants) been the outliers among the 11 operators,” he said.

The report was however quick to add that the NCAA summary of flight operations failed “to show correlations or causes for the delays, was silent on contributory factors/ agencies for controllable delays and sadly limited the report’s usefulness as a tool for conducting root cause analysis or drive improvement.”

In arriving at the cost impact of the delays, the experts at GSSM applied the FAA 2021 average cost of delay benchmark of $74.20 to the NCAA data.

These include: Average flights per month: 80,328/12=6,694(NCAA Data); Average Delay: 59%=3,949.46(NCAA data); Average delay time: 15 minutes (conservatively assumed); Cost per minute: $74.20 USD (local costs will definitely be higher on account of inefficiencies);  Average number of delayed flights per month: 3,949.46; 15mins delay average x 3949.46 delayed flights/Month x $74.2 (cost of delay per minute) =$4,395,748.98 monthly= leading to yearly estimate of: $52,748,987.8.

“For some perspective, this figure is more than the list price of a brand-new E-Jet E-190 aircraft.

An even more interesting approach is to compare this value to the consolidated profit of the entire 11 domestic airlines in Nigeria,” the report added.

The Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) had insisted that 90 percent of the causes of flight delays were beyond them. 

Vice-President of AON, Allen Onyema decried the absence of adequate infrastructure at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, saying about 10 airlines were using few check-in counters at the airport.