PASSENGER traffic in Nigeria’s aviation industry recorded a major rebound in 2022 with over 16m passengers recorded on both the domestic and international market.
According to the summary released by the country’s Civil Aviation Authority detailing the number of flights operated by commercial airlines on both the local and international routes, 16,173,361 passengers were recorded in 2022.
This comprises 12,669,639 passengers by domestic airlines and 3,503,722 international passengers.
The summary indicated that 11 domestic airlines operated 80,328 flights with 47,144 of the flights delayed while 26 airlines operated 13,003 international flights with 4,628 of the flights delayed in addition to 82 cancellations.
The passenger figure showed a 13 per cent increase in the 2021 figure of 14.2m and the highest number of passengers to be recorded in the sector after the COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition, the figure is nine per cent lesser than the pre-COVID passenger figure of 17.5m which was the highest figure to be recorded under the current administration.
Further breakdown of the passenger figure showed that there were 6,309,662 inbound domestic passengers and 6,359,977 outbound passengers.
The international passenger on the other hand also shows a lingering migratory pattern with inbound of 1,648,255 and 1,855,467 outbound passengers; an indication of a lot of people leaving the country without returning.
While domestic airlines cancelled 795 flights in the year under review, only 82 flights were cancelled by international airlines while the international carriers recorded 48,234 cases of delayed or missing luggage.
