For the second time in two months, Emirates Airline has suspended flights to Nigeria because it is unable to repatriate funds from the country.
An airline spokesperson told Reuters that the airline has had several meetings with the Nigerian government to get over the issue. The country is facing severe dollar shortages.
In a statement to the news agency, the airline said: “This (the proposed proposals) included the repatriation and receipt of at least 80 percent of our remaining blocked funds by the end of October 2022, in addition to providing a guaranteed mechanism to avoid future repatriation accumulation challenges and delays.
“Under these extraordinary circumstances, Emirates had no option but to suspend flights to/from Nigeria from 29 October to mitigate against further losses moving forward.”
The airline had resumed flights in September after the Nigerian central bank released $265 million to airlines to settle outstanding ticket sales.
“We were encouraged by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s efforts of reviewing our request, and considered that this critical issue would be swiftly resolved with the subsequent clearance of our remaining funds,” an Emirates spokesperson told Khaleej Times.
“However, Emirates has yet to receive an allocation of our blocked funds to be repatriated. Without the timely repatriation of the funds and a mechanism in place to ensure that future repatriation of Emirates’ funds do not accumulate in any way, the backlog will continue to grow, and we simply cannot meet our operational costs nor maintain the commercial viability of our operations in Nigeria.”
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