The Managing Director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Captain Rabiu Musa Yadudu has revealed that it would be costly for the agency to operate 24 hours at every airport in Nigeria. He made it known that only a few airports are self-sustaining and it would require heavy funding for them to operate for that period, which the authority cannot afford.
Yadudu spoke to the media recently in Lagos and said nobody or airport authority would keep an aerodrome functional when there is no tangible profit to be made from the venture. He noted that flights only operate a few times a week in many of the airports.
Yadudu talked about a time when an airline wrote to the authority to operate 24 hours in Yola. He said after getting the letter, the authority wrote back to the carrier and assured that it would mobilise equipment, personnel and resources to the facility to facilitate seamless operations for the airline only for the carrier not to fulfil its promise.
He said: “The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria wants all airports to operate 24-hours. We are service providers and we would like to make money like every service providers do.
“Someone has to pay for the 24-hour service. Nobody keeps the airport open 24 hours for an airport that is not busy and has just one, two or three airlines going to the place.”
While talking further, he noted that even in Europe and other developed countries, many airports still operate sunrise to set airport service.
He said: “An airline once wrote to FAAN that it wanted to operate to Yola airport. We looked at it and said we were not going to deny them the service. Having to run a 24-hour operation is good but it takes a lot of effort and it costs so much.
“We asked the airline for the feasibility study of running the service for at least six months. We do not want a situation where we start and less than two weeks you stop. We waited for the airline and we never saw the airline again. A lot goes into it like fuelers. We don’t open airports for 24 hours anyhow.
“At present, apart from the Lagos and Abuja airports, which operate late-night flights up to 11.30 pm -12 midnight because of scheduled international flights, the other airports cannot function beyond 6.30 pm as they are shut down due to the absence of ILS facilities.”
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