Emirates Airlines flight into Lagos has landed at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, (MMIA) two years after it suspended Nigerian operation.
The development follows a hint by the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo.
NewsNGR understands that the airline that suspended operations over trapped foreign exchange with the Central Bank of Nigeria landed on Tuesday at the old terminal of MMIA.
The flight resumption was operated using a Boeing 777-300ER.
In May, Emirates announced that it would resume flight services to Nigeria from October 1, 2024.
It said, “The service will be operated using a Boeing 777-300ER. EK783 will depart Dubai at 0945hrs, arriving in Lagos at 1520hrs; the return flight EK784 will leave Lagos at 1730hrs and arrive in Dubai at 0510hrs the next day.”
Reacting to the development, the President of the Association of Foreign Airlines and Representatives in Nigeria (AFARN), Kingsley Nwokoma, expressed delight over Emirates flight resumption after over two years of suspending operations in Nigeria.
Recall that in November 2022, Emirates suspended flights to Nigeria, blaming its inability to repatriate its revenue from the country.
The airline had said, “Under these extraordinary circumstances, Emirates had no option but to suspend flights to/from Nigeria from 29 October 2022 to mitigate against further losses moving forward,
“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.”
The resumption may be linked to the settlement of $7bn foreign exchange backlogs inherited by the Bola Ahmed Tinubu government and series of diplomatic talks between the Nigerian government and the UAE authorities.