With the resumption of normal academic and business activities after the Christmas and New Year festivities, there is now a high traffic of air passengers at the Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa.
The Tide had observed between Monday and Tuesday that most of the passengers have been struggling to obtain tickets for their journey, unlike in the last week of December where there were just few travellers, where ticketers and airline workers were almost idling on their jobs.
It was observed that the bulk of the passengers were more of young men and women, especially those of school age bracket, who might be rushing back to school.
The high traffic of passengers were also identified to be people who were rushing back to resume their businesses and work, as the bulk of them were said to be Lagos-bound passengers.
The rush resulted to long-queues at the terminal building at the departure where boarding pass and tickets were sold to intending passengers by the various airline operators.
However, there was no report of increase in the charges, as the fare to Abuja and Lagos remained the same irrespective of the rush or the class.
One of the passengers who interacted with The Tide Mr. John Igwe said that he obtained his ticket and boarding pass for Lagos through the Arik airline counter at the normal price.
According to him, there was no need for any increase in air ticket, since the aviation fuel, otherwise known as ‘Jet A1’ is not scarce.
A visit to the Arik airline office at the terminal building on Tuesday shows that staff of the airline were busser in issuing tickets and counting of cash.

Corlins Walter