The Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority has decided to wade into the impasse between aviation unions and airlines over the Ticket Sales Charge debt which accumulated during the US-Iran conflict that drove Jet A1 aviation fuel prices up by 266.7 per cent — urging both sides to return to dialogue and suspend industrial action while efforts to resolve the dispute continue.
The NCAA's intervention came as aviation unions, including ATSSSAN and NUATE, issued a three-day notice of strike against airlines deemed to be indebted to the NCAA on 7 August 2026, escalating a dispute that had already seen a 14-day ultimatum issued in early July and a prior NCAA-AON instalment payment arrangement that some airlines had begun honouring while others had not.
The NCAA's Position
NCAA Director-General Capt. Chris Najomo acknowledged the complexity of the TSC situation — recognising that the surge in aviation fuel costs created genuine financial difficulty for airlines that made TSC remittance difficult without making it legitimate to withhold passenger levies. The NCAA's approach has been to seek a structured middle ground: acknowledging the debts, establishing realistic repayment timelines, and maintaining pressure for compliance without triggering a complete breakdown of operations that would harm the passengers the TSC is ultimately designed to protect.
The NCAA urged the unions to exercise restraint pending the return of Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development Festus Keyamo, who the regulator indicated was actively working on a resolution framework. The regulator also appealed to airlines to demonstrate good faith by accelerating their compliance with the earlier instalment arrangement agreed with the AON — under which airlines were to pay 10 per cent of outstanding TSC remittances immediately with the balance in agreed instalments.
The Structural Issue
The NCAA's mediation role in this dispute reflects a broader structural tension in Nigerian aviation: the regulator is simultaneously the body responsible for enforcing TSC remittance, the agency whose own funding depends on TSC revenue, and the institution tasked with maintaining aviation safety oversight regardless of the financial state of the airlines it regulates. Navigating these overlapping interests — as creditor, regulator, and safety authority — while a labour dispute threatens to ground the very operations the NCAA is meant to oversee has tested the regulator's institutional capacity throughout August 2026. The outcome of the mediation will shape not just the TSC dispute but the precedent for how Nigeria's aviation funding model handles financial crises that compromise airlines' ability to meet their statutory obligations.
