By Jonathan Ugbal
Nigeria’s oldest civil aviation company, Aero Contractors has again axed the Calabar route from Lagos and Abuja from its schedule.
The Airline resumed the route on December 9, 2022, after an 8 months hiatus with one of the Boeing 737 leased from the Cross River State Government, with registration 5N – BYR, a 24-year-old plane whose first flight happened on December 12, 1998. It is painted with a “Cally” livery.
The jetliner was one of the six aircraft Aero Contractors used in resuming scheduled flights on December 5, 2022, after the new Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Captain Ado Sanusi disclosed in a press conference that the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority had given the airline the green light to commence operations.
But, schedule data shows that Aero axed the Lagos – Calabar – Lagos (LOS – CBQ – LOS) and Abuja – Calabar – Abuja (ABV – CBQ – ABV) routes in early April 2023 after just four months and less than 40,000 seats offered within the same period.
Also, a simple visit to the airline’s website shows that Calabar has been removed from the list of airports to depart from. The city is also not included in the list of arrival airports.
This is despite the fact that it is still listed as one of the destinations in the ads running on the website.
Meanwhile, data from FlightAware and FlightRadar24 shows that 5N – BYR has not recorded any activity in the past two weeks. The second aircraft, 5N – BYQ last flew in 2021.
