Emirates suspends flights to Nigeria indefinitely

Why Emirates is suspending operations in Nigeria: The airline had earlier announced that it would suspend its operations from October 29, 2022, over the failure of government to make dollars available to the foreign carriers to repatriate their revenue.

The airline first made the announcement during a meeting held at the National Assembly recently between the legislators, the Minister of Aviation and aviation stakeholders, including airlines and travel agents.

In a statement by the airline on Thursday, November 03, 2022, the airline said it had no option but to suspend flights to and from Nigeria to mitigate further losses.

What happened: Recall that the move by the airline followed a failed intervention by the Central Bank of Nigeria to resolve the issue of trapped aviation funds less than three months after it had earlier suspended its flights to the nation in August over the inability to repatriate $85 million in revenue.

The statement read in part: “Emirates has continued to actively seek a solution for the repatriation of the remainder of its blocked funds in Nigeria. We were encouraged by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s efforts of reviewing our request, and considered that this critical issue would be swiftly resolved with the subsequent clearance of our remaining funds.

“Under these extraordinary circumstances, Emirates had no option but to suspend flights to/from Nigeria from October 29 2022 to mitigate against further losses moving forward”.

How Emirates had been operating in Nigeria: Emirates operated twice daily to Lagos and once daily to Abuja, recording 21 flights every week with high load factor.