The Airline Operators of Nigeria have escalated their challenge to the five per cent Ticket Sales Charge with a direct call on the National Assembly to scrap the levy entirely — arguing that the TSC's structural design is fundamentally flawed and should be replaced with a FAAN-style pooled funding model that collects all aviation revenue into a single pool allocated across agencies based on actual operational needs.
The AON's position goes significantly further than the earlier TSC reform debate, which centred on how to redistribute the existing five per cent among agencies rather than whether the levy should exist at all.
The FAAN Model Argument
Under the FAAN approach, the authority generates operational revenues through aeronautical charges that it retains and uses to fund operations without TSC dependence. The AON argued that if the NCAA can remit ₦500 million annually to the government and remain profitable, the aviation industry generates sufficient surplus to sustain a pooled fund of the scale needed to finance all agency operations. Under the proposed model, all aviation charges would accrue into a single pooled fund, with allocations to each agency — NCAA, NAMA, NiMet, NSIB — assessed periodically based on operational requirements rather than through fixed statutory percentages.
Airlines' Stake in the TSC Debate
Airlines bear the burden of collecting the TSC from passengers and remitting it, and the non-remittance crisis that triggered union ultimatums in July 2026 reflects the genuine financial difficulty carriers face in meeting TSC obligations during severe cost pressure periods. A pooled model eliminating the direct airline remittance obligation would ease this burden. The AON also has a legitimate structural argument: fixed percentage TSC allocations create incentives for agencies to compete for a larger share of a fixed pie rather than finding more efficient ways to fund operations. Whether the National Assembly and agencies themselves would accept a model removing their guaranteed TSC allocations in favour of discretionary pooled fund distributions remains the key political challenge facing the proposal.
