No fewer than 3,319,720 air travellers passed through Nigeria airports between January and March 2019.
The Consumer Protection Department of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) made this known in a document obtained by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Wednesday.
NAN reports that the figure represents a 3.96 per cent increase compared to the 3,188,138 passengers recorded between January and March 2018.
According to the document, the 30 airlines on the international routes operated a total of 3,872 flights and flew 946,639 passengers during the period under review.
It said that eight domestic airlines operated a total of 14,735 flights and air lifted 2,373,181 passengers across the country.
Thus, airlines on the domestic routes accounted for 71 per cent of the passenger traffic while the international routes 29 per cent.
Commenting on the development, Mr Sam Adurogboye, General Manager, Public Relations, NCAA, said there was need to sustain and consolidate on the growth being recorded in the aviation sector.
Adurogboye said : “The most important thing is compliance with safety. Once there is safety, the confidence of the flying public will continue to increase and that will encourage more people to travel by air.
“Safety is the key thing because accidents scare people and make them run away. Safety is our core area in NCAA and we have continued to strengthen our safety regulations.
“The airlines on their part, apart from adhering to safety regulations should also improve on their customer care.
“The moment they continue to do that and have schedule integrity and on-time service, more people will continue to travel by air. ”
He also assured the flying public that the Nigerian airspace was safe for operations but not immune to air incidents and accidents as was recently witnessed in some other parts of the world.
Adurogboye said: “What this has shown is that nobody is immune from accidents but that we must continue to take the issue of safety very seriously.
“So far so good, Nigeria has been having a safe operation and we won’t relent on our oars. We must continue to work harder on our safety roadmap.
“We have been issuing weather advisory for the airline operators and the NCAA is ready to stand by them when they delay or cancel flights due to these weather issues because safety remains paramount,” he said. (NAN)
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