Local airlines, yesterday, strived for approval to impose a new fuel fee of between 25 and 40 percent on consumers as part of measures to cope with an upswing in the price of flight fuel.
The operators, clearly hard-hit by the surging cost of fuel and operations, said their survival is dangling on the new surcharge, though with imminent impacts on the already high cost of airfares.
Also, the airlines, under the aegis of Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), urged the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to forfeit the five percent it receives as fuel surcharge and adopt the new 25 to 45 percent regime on aviation fuel consumption.
This came as the operators also flayed the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) for the alleged immediate closure of Runway 18L at Murtala Muhammed Airport Lagos, without due notification.
The airlines, last month, raised the alarm that a number of the risk collapse without reasonable aviation fuel to sustain commercial operations. They said besides the fuel scarcity disrupting slated operations, the prevailing market rate of ?690 to ?714/liter is unsustainable.
Aero Contractors has indefinitely shut down its operations, just as aviation fuel now sells for ?822/liter in Lagos and much more in the North, according to a report.
Chairman of AON, Abdulmunaf Sarina, in a message to NCAA, lamented that in addition to the crippling effect of intermittent shortages of Jet A1, the price rose from ?420 per liter in February 2022 to over ?780 last week.
