You know how it feels when you're finally ready to travel, packed and set, only to hear that your flight is delayed… again? Well, it turns out it’s not just you. A recent report from the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) dropped some serious numbers: over 60 per cent of domestic flights in Nigeria were either delayed or cancelled. That’s a huge chunk of journeys disrupted.

The report pointed fingers at Air Peace and United Nigeria Airlines for having the highest number of these disruptions. Now, before you decide these airlines are just not cutting it, there's a bit more to the story. These two airlines happen to be the busiest ones out there, flying the most routes. So, when things go wrong, their numbers naturally look higher just because they’re flying so much.

But here's the thing: the NCAA’s report mostly just gave us the numbers on delays and cancellations. It didn't really dig into why these flights were held up. Think about it. It's easy to blame the airlines, but there are a whole lot of problems outside of their direct control that mess with flight schedules.

One big headache is the lack of space at our airports. Especially in Lagos and Abuja, the aprons – that’s the area where planes park, get loaded, and prepared for departure – are just too small. Imagine your plane is ready to go, passengers are on board, but it can't even move because another plane is blocking it, or movement is restricted. You have to wait. And a 30-minute delay for one flight can easily snowball, messing up the rest of the airline's schedule for the day.

If these delays stretch into the night, airlines might have to cancel flights altogether, especially if the crew's working hours are up or the destination airport can't handle night landings.

Then there’s our navigation infrastructure. It’s just not up to par for today’s air travel. Some airports don’t have working Instrument Landing Systems (ILS), which helps planes land safely even when visibility is bad. So, if the weather turns foul, pilots might not be able to land or take off, even if planes are flying fine elsewhere with better equipment. Here, visibility sometimes needs to be 2,000 or 3,000 metres for safety, but in other countries, planes can operate in much poorer conditions.

When flights get held up or diverted because of this, the airlines get blamed in the statistics, even though it's the airport's equipment that's the real issue.

Bird strikes are another nightmare. While it's a global problem, it’s worse here. Airports near bushy areas, swamps, or even open refuse dumps become bird magnets. A bird hitting an aircraft, especially an engine, can be incredibly costly to fix and can keep a plane grounded for ages. Every plane that's taken out of service like this throws schedules into chaos and adds to those delay and cancellation figures.

And let's not forget VIP movements. You know, when the President, Vice President, or other important people are travelling. Sometimes, for security reasons, air traffic has to be temporarily stopped. Planes waiting to take off have to sit tight, and arriving flights might have to circle around. This doesn't just disrupt things for a few minutes; the ripple effect can mess up an entire airline's schedule for the rest of the day.

Finally, even though airlines try their best to maintain their planes, technical issues can pop up unexpectedly. Aircraft are complex machines, and safety is always the number one priority. If there's a hint of a problem, a responsible airline has no choice but to ground the plane until it's fixed. Passengers might see this as the airline failing, but it's actually the airline doing its job to keep everyone safe. It's better to be delayed than to risk an accident, right?