The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority said domestic airlines operating in the country between January 2014 and last March recorded 40,574 cases of delayed flights while 600 others were cancelled.
This was contained in a document issued by the NCAA’s Consumer Protection Department, which was made available to newsmen in Lagos.
The document said 84,449 flights were operated by 10 domestic airlines during the period under review.
It said the airlines in operation then were: Aero Contractors, Arik, Air Peace, Azman, Dana, Discovery, First Nation, Medview, Overland and Top Brass.
Arik, which operated 34,489 flights, topped the chart of delayed and cancelled flights with 16,041 and 244 respectively.
This was closely followed by Aero Contractors, which recorded 13,564 delayed flights and 203 cancellations out of its 24,160 flight operations.
Dana operated 6,290 flights with 1,807 delayed flights, while only one flight was cancelled.
NAN, however, gathered that some of the delays and cancellations were caused by technical, weather conditions, air traffic control restrictions, security risks and industrial disputes.
Some passengers who spoke to NAN expressed concern about the frequency of delayed and cancelled flights by the airlines.
A lawyer, Clement Uchechi, urged the NCAA to urgently address the problem of delayed and cancelled flights in order to restore sanity to air traveling in Nigeria.
“I think the issue is very frustrating and disappointing. It is not a good experience for travellers and it needs to be addressed urgently,” Uchechi said.
Another passenger, Olatoye Adebiyi, said as a businessman, he had suffered several loses in the past due to the problem.
Adebiyi said: “There was a time I needed to be in Abuja by 3pm for an urgent business transaction but my flight was cancelled and I could not meet the deadline.
“There have been some other instances where my flights were delayed by the airlines and I was really not happy about it.”
NAN.
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