Nigeria, Ghana to restart international flights

Scheduled international flights from Nigeria will restart on August 29, Nigerian Aviation Minister Hadi Sirika has said. “Glad to announce the resumption of international flights from the 29th of August, 2020. Beginning with Lagos and Abuja as we did with the domestic flight resumption. Protocols and procedures will be announced in due course,” Sirika said in a tweet. Sirika later clarified that initially, only four inbound flights per day would be permitted at each of the two gateways. Nigeria banned all scheduled passenger flights and closed its airports to such operations on March 23. In early July, the country resumed domestic flights. Meanwhile, Ghanaian president Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said in a public address that international flights are likely to restart on September 1, 2020, due to the decline in the number of COVID-19 cases. However, he has not yet confirmed the date. “The Ministry of Aviation, the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority, and the Ghana Airports Co. Ltd, have been working, with the ministry of health and its agencies, to ascertain our readiness to reopen our airport. I am hoping that we will be ready to do so by September 1,” Akufo-Addo said. Ghanaian airports and borders have been closed since March 21. The country was the first to restart domestic flights in Africa when it did so on May 1, 2020.