Flight traffic at the Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa has drastically reduced as some airlines that ran four flights schedule to and from Abuja on daily basis, now operate a single flight in a day to the nation’s capital.
The Tide’s check on the flight operations of some airlines revealed that the major cause of the low flight traffic at the airport was due to the air unworthiness of some aircrafts.
Findings have shown that the Air Peace airline that used to have busy flight schedule at the airport, especially on Abuja route, is now struggling to operate one daily flight to Abuja.
Other airlines like Arik and Aero Contractors that used to have a good number of flights on both Abuja and Lagos routes, have also restricted their operations to one daily flight to Abuja and twice daily on Lagos route.
For the Dana airline, it now operates one daily flight from Lagos, and one from Abuja to Port Harcourt, with much records of delay.
Last Friday which was Easter Friday, Lagos bound Dana airline passengers were delayed for three hours due to a fault in the Dana aircraft.
Meanwhile, the Max Airline that is still young in operations at the Port Harcourt airport seems to be the only consistent airline, both on schedule and flight traffic.
A protocol officer with a maritime firm in Port Harcourt and a business operator at the airport, Mr Clinton Wele, described the Max airline as the only airline that is currently keeping Port Harcourt airport lively.
Efforts to speak with the Dana airline station manager, Mr Francis Ofangba, was not successful, but one of his staff who would not want his name mentioned, told The Tide that the airline was currently facing maintenance challenges.
He, however, said that the issue was not peculiar to Dana airline alone, but a general challenge facing most of the airlines in the country since the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic.
He noted that only few aircrafts on the fleet of many airlines are now in operation in the country, adding that the situation has created room for incessant and unusual hike in air ticket at the nation’s airports.

By: Corlins Walter