AM EDITORIAL: Why Nigerian Authorities Must Speed Up Work On Sunset Airports Approvals
Sunset airports are aerodromes that operate between the hours of 7am to 6pm because of the absence of landing facilities to enable night operations.
In Nigeria, five major airports in Lagos, Abuja, Port-Harcourt, Enugu and Kano operate 24 hours, sunrise to sunset and until recently, some airlines had to request for granting of extension to enable them operate into airports that shut down at 6:pm in situations where they have to operate into such airports after operational hours.
The Director General of Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Capt. Chris Najomo had said at the Stakeholders Engagement On Transforming The Aviation Industry Through Strategic Partnerships on Advancing Airports Sustainable Development, held in Lagos, February 2025 that the NCAA was collaborating with FAAN “to upgrade some sunrise/sunset airports to operate up till 10pm. This is to promote smooth passenger transport and reduce delays and cancellations.”
Other needs to upgrade more airports in Nigeria and approve their operations beyond 12 hours cannot be over-emphasized.
According to the Minister of Aviation & Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo (SAN), the enablement of growth for Nigeria’s local airlines constitutes part of the agenda of the Ministry under his leadership. Success in the airline business relies very heavily on aircraft utilization. An airline’s business plan for a year for instance, must be built on the level of aircraft utilization the company intends to achieve, to be able to pay for the aircraft, pay everybody else that should be paid and still record enough revenue to run the business successfully. Otherwise, that airline could be on its way out of existence.
The sunset limitation at many airports around Nigeria has restricted or squeezed the window for aircraft utilization. Some local airlines can hardly schedule more than six domestic sectors a day, per aircraft. For airlines that operate new or relatively new aircraft, which come with much higher acquisition costs, this mode of operation is anti-survival. Maximum aircraft utilization is the only way out, but for the sunset airport limitations. A few local airlines with the appropriate strategy have been seen scheduling new equipment mostly on the few routes in the country where utilization can be maximized by operating beyond daylight hours.
There is also need to prioritize the navigational and visual aids across the network of airports to remove daylight limitations and allow for longer aircraft utilization periods so as to enable strengthening of local airline business. Required Instrument Landing Systems (ILSs) should be provided while some prevalent Air Traffic Control procedures can equally be reviewed to save time and money for the system.
The restriction of those airport operations to 12 hours tends to dictate to an airline where and where it should go and at what time. As long as an airline is operating within the ambits of the appropriate civil aviation regulations, it should be allowed to play in the market while market forces rather than airport operating hours determine its performance.
All efforts should be made to deal with the safety implications and challenges of night operations and other constraints such as inadequate infrastructure and airports poor financial outlays. Other issues such as fire cover, primary and secondary power sources, provision of communication, navigation and surveillance aids, automatic weather stations and so on, should be addressed as soon as possible.
Restriction of airports’ operational hours contributes to inadequate maintenance of such airports and poses a great disincentive to travel and tourism opportunities that airports ought to provide. Besides, runway utilization is not maximized at airports where operations are restricted to 12 hours and Nigeria’s airlines lose billions of naira annually due to this restriction.
Although apart from safety requirements, business decisions involving traffic volume and viability provide guidance to the airport authority and the regulator on sunset/sunrise airport approvals. These factors ought to have been factored into the approval process and establishment of such airports from the beginning. This is a discussion for another day.AM
