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Nigeria sells an estimated 14 million airline seats on domestic routes every year, but the actual number of Nigerians who fly regularly is far smaller than that figure suggests, fewer than one million.
This is according to the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority’s Director of Airworthiness, Godwin Balang.
He made the disclosure at the International Conference Fellowship Conferment hosted by the Institute of Nigerian Aeronautical Engineers (INAE) in Lagos on Wednesday, which had as its theme: “Aeronautical Engineering and National Development: Repositioning the Nigerian Aviation Industry.”
Breaking down the numbers, Balang explained why seat-sales figures overstate the size of Nigeria’s actual flying population. “Today, I tell you, less than 1 million, or about 1 million, people actually actively fly. The statistics show that we sell an average of 14 million seats every year on domestic routes. Most of those seats go to passengers who purchase return tickets rather than one-way fares. If all of them buy only one return ticket, that gives a number of about 7 million people. Many of them fly more than one, two, or three return tickets. So that number keeps getting cut in half until you come down to about one million,” he said.
Balang also spoke on the country’s aviation history, saying: “Nigeria has been in the aviation business for 100 years. The first aircraft landed in 1925. It has been 100 years since then. And we are still actively involved in aviation. To be sincere, if not for the physical evidence, you see it in Kenya, and indeed in our Air Force and Nigeria Airways, you would almost think that aviation never happened here. But we have a lot of experience.”
Also speaking at the event, the Director-General of the NCAA, Capt. Chris Najomo, who was represented by the authority’s Lagos Regional Manager, Olubukola Teriba, said INAE has continued to play a vital role in promoting technical excellence, ethical practice, engineering education, and indigenous capacity development within the sector. “Every certificate of airworthiness issued, every aircraft maintained, every modification repair approved, every maintenance program reviewed and every inspection conducted ultimately depends upon the competence, integrity and personality of the aeronautical engineers. Engineering excellence is not merely a technical requirement, it is a safety imperative. As regulators, we have a shared responsibility to ensure that engineering standards continue to evolve in response to rapid technological advancement,” she said.
