BY LANRE OGUNDIPE
EVERY debate about making domestic air travel affordable in Nigeria seems to follow the same flight path—and ends at the wrong destination. We argue over ticket prices when we should be dismantling the structure that makes high fares inevitable.
Airfares are not the disease; they are the symptom. They are the smoke, not the fire.
No airline deliberately prices itself out of the market. Empty seats generate no revenue. Every operator wants fuller aircraft, higher passenger volumes and lower operating costs. When fares remain persistently high despite weak consumer purchasing power, the real question is not why airlines charge what they do, but why flying has become so expensive in the first place.
That is where the national conversation should begin.
Affordable air travel is more than a convenience for frequent flyers. It is an engine of economic growth. It enhances business mobility, strengthens domestic tourism, attracts investment, deepens regional integration and expands trade. Every reduction in the cost of flying creates economic value far beyond the aviation industry.
For too long, aviation policy has been trapped in a cycle of turbulence. Every increase in ticket prices triggers public outrage, official concern and promises of intervention. Yet once the headlines fade, the structural causes remain untouched. We keep adjusting the compass without changing the course.
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Aviation fuel still accounts for a substantial share of airline operating costs. Aircraft maintenance remains heavily outsourced, draining scarce foreign exchange. Airlines grapple with multiple taxes and statutory charges, volatile exchange rates, rising insurance premiums, airport levies and regulatory costs—all of which eventually find their way into the fares paid by passengers.
These are not temporary headwinds. They are structural realities.
No amount of public pressure or administrative directives will produce affordable airfares while those realities persist.
If government genuinely wants lower fares, its priority must shift from regulating prices to reducing costs.
The establishment of world-class Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facilities is no longer optional. Every aircraft ferried overseas for routine maintenance exports scarce foreign exchange and imports higher operating costs. The aviation fuel market requires greater competition, transparency and efficiency. Multiple taxation should be rationalised. Airport user charges deserve comprehensive review, while regulatory processes must become faster, simpler and more commercially responsive without compromising safety.
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Equally critical is access to long-term financing. Airlines cannot modernise ageing fleets or improve operational efficiency when capital remains prohibitively expensive. A financially distressed airline cannot consistently provide affordable services.
The objective, therefore, is not cheap tickets achieved by administrative fiat. It is a stronger aviation economy in which efficiency naturally produces lower fares.
Affordable air travel is more than a convenience for frequent flyers. It is an engine of economic growth. It enhances business mobility, strengthens domestic tourism, attracts investment, deepens regional integration and expands trade. Every reduction in the cost of flying creates economic value far beyond the aviation industry.
This is why aviation reform requires more than another policy announcement. It demands coordinated implementation, regulatory consistency and a shared commitment by government, operators and industry stakeholders to remove the structural obstacles that keep domestic air travel unnecessarily expensive.
You cannot command the market to produce affordable airfares while the cost of doing business remains stubbornly high. Economics does not obey decrees. It responds to incentives, efficiency and sound policy.
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Lower airfares cannot be legislated into existence.
They must be engineered through sound policy, efficient regulation, competitive markets and sustained political will.
A compass does not move a traveller. It only points in the right direction.
Our compass is pointing in the right direction.
The question is whether we have the courage—and the discipline—to follow it.
Ogundipe, a public affairs analyst and former President, Nigeria, and Africa, Union of Journalists will be writing a weekly column every Monday, under the title, ‘The Compass’.
