Airline operators face 2 years in prison as NCAA moves to enforce 5% charge on ticket sales

Airline operators in Nigeria risk a two-year imprisonment, N5 million fine, or both for failing to remit the mandatory five percent charge from sales of tickets and cargo services.

The Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) disclosed this in the newly introduced Civil Aviation Act (CAA) 2022 made available to the media on Tuesday.

This comes after the agency had accused domestic airlines of breaching the country’s financial rules.

The NCAA claimed in August that airline operators failed to pay the agency N19 billion as charges from ticket sales.

This was however lower than the N37 billion the Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, mentioned to journalists last year.

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Ripples Nigeria gathered that funds generated from the five percent charge on ticket sales and cargo services would be shared between NCAA, Nigerian Airspace Manage­ment Agency (NAMA), Nigerian Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB), and the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMET).

The act read: “There shall be a 5 percent of airfare, contract, charter, and cargo sales charge payable to the authority, which shall apply on all international and domestic air transportation originating in Nigeria irrespective of place of sale, issuance of air ticket or execution of the contract of carriage.

“An air operator which fails to remit to the authority within the time specified in the regulations the 5 percent charge commits an offence and its directors are each liable on conviction to a fine of N5,000,000 or imprisonment for a period of two years or both.”

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