Nigeria’s Domestic Airline market faced turbulence in December 2025, as available seats fell to 850,420.
This drop represents a 7.5% decline from 919,400 seats in December 2024, highlighting ongoing challenges in the sector.
Nigeria’s Domestic Airline Faces Turbulence
Meanwhile, other African markets painted a brighter picture.
For example, South Africa expanded from 1.69 million to 1.8 million seats, maintaining its lead.
Similarly, Kenya grew 8.6%, Tanzania surged 27%, and Cape Verde jumped 33.7%, demonstrating strong regional growth.
In North Africa, countries also advanced.
Algeria added 26.2% more seats, Morocco nearly 12%, and Egypt increased 2.5%, reflecting steady demand.
Challenges In Fleet Expansion
Nigeria’s decline results from airlines struggling to access dry-lease aircraft, which they need to operate planes with their own crews.
Previously, the country’s blacklisting over compliance issues restricted leasing and slowed domestic aviation growth.
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After recent reforms, Nigeria improved its Cape Town Convention score to 75.5%, prompting the AWG to remove the country from its watchlist.
So far, only one airline has qualified for a dry lease, and it expects to receive the aircraft in October 2025.
Meanwhile, other carriers continue to rely on expensive wet leases or purchase aircraft outright, which limits fleet expansion.
Furthermore, high interest rates and restricted financing make aircraft acquisition even more difficult for Nigerian airlines.
Maintenance And Operational Struggles
Because the country lacks domestic maintenance facilities, airlines must ferry planes abroad, costing $400,000 per trip and causing months of downtime.
Although Air Peace and Ibom Air are building new MRO facilities, they are not yet operational.
As a result, Nigeria’s domestic aviation must manage limited fleets, high costs, and growing passenger demand.
While other African countries continue to soar, Nigeria waits for infrastructure and tools to take off again.
