Why Emirates Airline Extended Resumption Date of Flights to and from Nigeria till October 10
The Emirates Airline, flag carrier of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has extended the resumption date of flights to and from Nigeria till October 10 due to the diplomatic row between Nigeria and the UAE.
This was disclosed by the airline via a notice posted on its website.
What Emirates is saying
It stated, “Emirates’ flights to and from Nigeria will remain suspended until 10th October 2021.
Customers who have been to or connected through Nigeria in the last 14 days will not be permitted on any Emirates flights bound for Dubai. Affected flight bookings have been cancelled.
“If your flight has been cancelled or impacted by route suspensions due to COVID‑19 restrictions, you don’t need to call us immediately for rebooking. You can simply hold on to your Emirates ticket and when flights resume, get in touch with your booking office or us to make new travel plans.
“Emirates regrets any inconvenience caused.” Read more
IATA Releases Global Air Cargo Traffic
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has released data for global air cargo markets for August 2021 showing that demand continued its strong growth trend.
The data by the global airlines regulator indicates that comparisons between 2021 and 2020 monthly results are distorted by the extraordinary impact of COVID-19 pandemic which followed a normal demand pattern.
According to the data, global demand, measured in cargo tonne-kilometers (CTKs), was up 7.7 per cent compared to August 2019, which was 8.6 per cent for international operations.
Overall growth, according to the data remains strong compared to the long-term average growth trend of around 4.7 per cent.
The pace of growth, according to the data, slowed slightly compared to July, which saw demand increase 8.8 per cent against pre-COVID-19 levels.
Cargo capacity recovery paused in August, down by 12.2 per cent compared to August 2019 , which was minus 13.2 percent for international operations.
In month-on-month terms, capacity fell by 1.6 per cent – the largest drop since January 2021.
According to the data economic conditions continue to support air cargo growth but are slightly weaker than in the previous months indicating that global manufacturing growth has peaked:
The August manufacturing output component of the Purchasing Managers Indices (PMIs) was 51.9, indicating a short-term boost to demand if those orders are shipped by air, reflecting a decline from 54.4 in July.
The data indicates: “ The August new export orders component of the PMIs was favorable for air cargo, despite being less supportive than in the previous months. Expansion continued at the global level, however, there was contraction in emerging economies. The inventory-to-sales ratio remains low ahead of the peak year-end retail season. Read more
Senate Summons FAAN MD Over N1.5bn Indebtedness to NiMeT
The Senate has summoned the Managing Director of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, Rabiu Yadudu, to explain his agency’s alleged failure to remit N1.5bn meant to be the the internally generated revenue of the Nigeria Meteorological Agency in the last six years.
Chairman of the Senate Public Accounts Committee, Senator Matthew Urhoghide, gave the directive at the last sitting of the panel.
The MD of FAAN did not appear before the panel to respond to the allegation of non-remitttance of 10 per cent landing charges to NIMET.
Urhoghide said, “We have earlier invited FAAN to appear before us but the MD refused to show up.
“We may be compelled to demand a warrant of arrest to be issued against the FAAN MD because we consider his action as an insult against the legislative arm of government.”
SPAC is currently considering the 2016 report of the Auditor General for the Federation.
One of the queries contained in the report alleged that FAAN owed NIMET the sum of N1.5bn to as unpaid arrears of 10 percent landing charges.
Part of the query read, “Examination of the agency’s (NiMeT) approved Internally Generated Revenue and Expenditure Budget revealed that the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria owed a total of N1.5bn to the agency as unpaid arrears of 10 per cent landing charges.”
NiMeT in its response lamented that efforts to make FAAN management to remit the money had not yielded positive results. Read more
Worry Over Acute Shortage of Airworthiness Inspectors
With 10 scheduled domestic airlines, 24 non-scheduled carriers, and about 40 prospective airlines, the Nigerian Aviation sector is facing an acute shortage of Inspectors, Daily Trust can report.
While the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) Director-General, Capt. Musa Nuhu has consistently decried the impact of the shortage on the agency to carry out its surveillance and enforcement activities in the sector, findings by our correspondent revealed that the situation has got worse with the authority having between 80 to 100 Inspectors serving both the existing carriers and the upcoming ones.
The development, it was learnt, was also responsible for the delay in the issuance of an Air Operator’s Certificate (AOC) for some of the incoming airlines.
A highly placed source in the NCAA told Daily Trust that a case in point was the delay in the issuance of AOC to Green Africa Airways, a new entrant into the airline subsector.
While the airline had advertised to commence flight in June this year and even sold out tickets, the NCAA couldn’t complete the AOC process until August when the airline finally got the certificate which is the major requirement for any airline to commence operations.
Daily Trust reports that the AOC process takes five stages and at critical stages of the certification especially during demonstration flights when the aspiring air carrier is expected to conduct a test flight of 50 hours without passengers, the Inspectors are needed.
But with the shortage, it then means many of the aspiring airlines would have to wait longer than expected to complete the registration process as the same set of Inspectors also serves existing airlines and when issues arise, they are deployed to carry out airworthiness checks on their aircraft from time to time in addition to routine audit. Read more
U.S. Urges for More Vaccination Against COVID-19, With Help of Mandates, Guidelines
The United States has seen its first notable decline in COVID-19 metrics in more than three months, with coronavirus-related hospital admissions and average daily new cases dropping by more than 30 percent over the last month, local media reported.
NEW YORK, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) — The United States is making progress against the current surge of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the country is not out of the woods yet, the medical advisor to the White House Anthony Fauci told ABC on Sunday, two days after the national death toll of the coronavirus surpassed the grim milestone of 700,000.
“We certainly are turning the corner on this particular surge,” said the nation’s top infectious disease expert. “But we have experienced over now close to 20 months surges that go up and then come down, and then go back up again. The way to keep it down, to make that turnaround continue to go down, is to do what we mentioned: get people vaccinated.”
“When you have 70 million people in the country who are eligible to be vaccinated, who are not yet vaccinated, that’s the danger zone right there,” added Fauci. “So it’s within our capability to make sure that that turnaround that we’re seeing, that very favorable and optimistic turnaround, continues to go down and doesn’t do what we’ve seen multiple times before, where it goes down and then it comes back up.”
The United States has seen its first notable decline in COVID-19 metrics in more than three months, with coronavirus-related hospital admissions and average daily new cases dropping by more than 30 percent over the last month, reported the television network.
According to The New York Times’ update, the seven-day average of confirmed cases of the pandemic stood at 108,009 nationwide on Saturday, with its 14-day change striking a 27-percent fall. The COVID-19-related deaths were 1,882 on Saturday, with the 14-day change realizing a 6-percent decrease.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated on Sunday that 214,870,696 people have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, making up 64.7 percent of the whole U.S. population; fully vaccinated people stood at 185,143,698, accounting for 55.8 percent of the total. A total of 4,742,750 people, or 2.6 percent of fully vaccinated group, received booster shots. Read more
Sources: Daily Trust, The Nation Online, The Punch, People’s Daily