Reactions As Passengers Shun Flights After Airfare Rises To N50,000

Nigerians on social media have reacted to a photo of an empty airline after domestic airlines raised their minimum fare to N50,000.

This is coming after a Nigerian man named Ikenna, via his microblogging platform, Twitter, shared a photo of his morning flight to Abuja with most passengers seat empty.

The photo stirred reactions as many social media users noted that economy class tickets use to cost N22,000 to N48,000, depending on the airline and destination, except during festive seasons when there is a spike in the fare.

They, however, stated that last weekend, due to the discounts that was yanked off,  the prices of air tickets for most domestic airlines rose to a minimum of N50,000.

Unfortunately, the recent increase in ticket fares has seen a reduction in the number of passengers traveling by air.

One Twitter user wrote; Illuminated@C_CDon “No way! Not sure it’s because of the price changes though. Prices regularly hovered between 28k and 50k before now for online purchases. Agents charged as high as 70k too.”

Another Twitter user wrote; @gb3nga wrote;  “We are finished when we don’t know the cause of our problems indeed. This increase is not due to local factors, but external factors. Your jet fuel is imported, and crude oil prices is about to hit $100.. Thats the movement of crude in the last 6. months.”

@dulahi wrote; “Nigeria is using the same money earned from oil to subsidise petrol. So, as price of crude oil increases, our subsidy costs also shoot up. High oil prices is a good news and bad news at the same time.”

Ogechukwu wrote; “Nigerian companies and service providers act like they are only ones easily affected by increase in production/delivery cost. I know we have unique challenges but the rate at which prices of goods and services increases drastically is something to think about.”