According to a recent analysis put together by several aviation experts, aircraft delays cost the industry an estimated $52.7 million yearly.General Sales and Solution Management Limited (GSSM), an aviation consultancy firm, conducted an analysis of the financial effects of flight delays, which have become a common occurrence in the aviation industry.
The experts calculated that a loss of $4,395,748.98 per month results in a yearly loss of $52,748,987.8 or N24,289,326,412.27.
A few days after the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) released the 2022 Executive Summary of International and Domestic Flight operations, which noted significant flight delays by domestic carriers, Babatunde Adeniji, the founding partner and executive director of GSSM, released a report.
According to the summary, 11 domestic airlines operated 80,328 flights with 47,144 of the flights delayed between January and December 2022.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 carriers as a whole were only on time for 41% of flights, he claimed, citing Ibom Air, Green Africa, and Value Jet as the outliers among the 11 operators.
The NCAA summary of flight operations, however, was quick to point out that it “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 driving improvement.
“The researchers at GSSM used the NCAA data to apply the FAA 2021 average cost of delay benchmark of $74.20 to determine the monetary impact of the delays.The average number of flights per month is 80,328/12, or 6,694 (NCAA data); the average delay is 59%, or 3,949.46; Average amount of 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 context, this sum exceeds the list price of a recently manufactured E-Jet E-190 aircraft.
Comparing this amount to the combined profit of all 11 domestic airlines in Nigeria is an even more intriguing strategy, the research continued.90% of the causes of flight delays, according to the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), are outside of their control.Allen Onyema, vice president of AON, bemoaned the inadequate infrastructure at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja, claiming that only a few check-in counters were being used by roughly ten airlines.
