Airlines jostle for Nigeria’s burgeoning aviation market

 

Wole Shadare
The Guardian

 

LAGOS- The Nigerian aviation market is considered a big market. With over 160 million population, it is natural that the market will remain where the population is. As airlines jostle to control larger market share of the nation’s industry, these airlines are introducing new products to attract new customers.

 

In the aviation industry, airlines are really expanding their business frontiers to remain competitive even in the face of harsh economic realities.

 

Despite the country’s aviation decaying  infrastructure, the carriers, particularly foreign airlines are still making huge returns on investment. Delta Air Lines says it is set to invest more than $2 billion to upgrade its global product offerings. As a result, it has introduced series of product upgrades for its Nigerian market.

 

Delta Air new products into Nigeria comes as the airline acknowledged that it is now faced with a strong competition, especially from its home country, through the United Airlines which recently started direct operations from Houston to Lagos.

 

These investments running into several billions of dollars have seen airlines like Emirates, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic Airways, Air France-KLM, Qatar, Lufthansa and others make profit on Nigerian routes. This can be attributed to the top level, first class products they offer.