The Nigerian international travel market is resilient and shows enduring growth as airlines record good load factor even at low seasons.
This was disclosed by the Marketing Manager, East and West Africa, Delta Air Lines, Bobby Bryan who said Africa is the future in economic development and Nigeria is the future of Africa.
Bryan noted that Nigerians have resilient spirit and no matter the challenges, they do not give up; rather, they continue to strive to succeed and that explains why passenger traffic rebounds quickly whenever there is a downturn, adding that Nigerians travel a lot.
The Marketing Manager, who spoke to journalists to mark the end of the year by Delta said that the airline would continue to operate from Nigeria and it has come to stay in the country.
“Africa is the future and Nigeria is the future of Africa. For me, even when there are challenges here, and we had seen more difficult times, whatever they may be, the Nigerian market always shows resilience. People want to fly here; they are doing business, they are going to school, they are trading; they are travelling for fun and to see their family members. Even at the challenging times, the demand for travel in Nigeria is always strong.
“In some other countries demand goes up; demand goes down but in Nigeria there is always demand. Of course people have had time with the forex right now. You find it a bit of challenge but Nigeria as a market always find a way to bounce back and we know and that is why we say we are not going anywhere, we are here to stay because we know the market always comes back,” Bryan said.
Reviewing the West Africa air travel market Bryan said: “Generally speaking the West African market has grown. There was of course the Ebola period when there was a drop in the market but in the last year as the Ebola went away we see traffic coming back and we are expecting the growth to continue. The greater challenge is the forex market and the exchange rate, but we believe there will be growth because people have the desire to travel. It is not an option to travel here; people want to travel.”
Bryan said Delta has lifted 900,000 passengers from Nigeria to the United States, remarking that safety is its utmost priority, maintaining that all aircraft they flew to Nigeria and every other route are safe and there was no particular aircraft type designated to the Nigerian route alone.
According to him, Delta only operates safe, well-maintained aircraft.
“All our aircraft are certified safe and we fly them everywhere. We do not have a particular aircraft for any one destination; we use aircraft as the market dictates. The same aircraft we fly into Lagos can be used for Amsterdam, Tokyo and any other place the traffic dictates. We do not keep dedicated aircraft to any route.”
Delta started service between Nigeria and the United States in December 2007, since that date it had carried over 900,000 passengers on the route.
“Delta is now the only airline to operate a daily year-round service between the U.S. and Lagos. On average we carry approximately 10,000 passengers per month. Delta has a strong market share of Nigeria-US traffic and on our Lagos to Atlanta flights have an average load factor of over 80 per cent with bookings trending positively. Delta has strong links between Nigeria and the United States. Not only given the large amount of high yield oil related passenger traffic and Lagos’ status as the commercial capital of Nigeria, but also given the strong ties with Atlanta which is home to a large Nigerian population.” He further said that the airline has been having a profitable year and its financial performance is increasing symbiotically with the airlines vast operations.
“Our operational performance has gone hand-in-hand with our financial performance. If we look after our people, they look after our customers, who in turn look after our shareholders. The numbers speak for themselves.
“The 2015 Q3 results was the 10th record quarter in a row for Delta. We earned a pre-tax profit of $2.2 billion – an increase of $547 million year over year. This allowed us to return $532 million to our owners through $107 million of dividends and $425 million of share repurchases.”
“We have also strengthened the balance sheet by reducing adjusted net debt to $6.4 billion,” Bryan said.
