International flight operations resumed at the Malam Aminu Kano International Airport on Tuesday after over one year of its closure due to COVID-19 pandemic.
The Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, had in March said the Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport would be reopened for international flights on April 5.
The Minister also said the Port Harcourt and Enugu airports would be reopened for international flights.
The Ethiopia Airlines plane with registration number: 5N- ATH landed at MAKIA on Tuesday at 1.30pm and departed with no fewer than 84 passengers at exactly 3pm.
The business community and lawmakers from Kano at the National Assembly had expressed concern over the continued closure of the airport which had impacted negatively on travel demands at the airport.
The Federal Government had at the beginning of the ban on international and domestic travels shut down airports across the country to curtail the spread of the coronavirus.
The government had later reopened the Lagos and Abuja airports for international flights.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian Government has announced that Kano, Port Harcourt and Enugu airports are now reopened for international flights.
Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, announced this on Monday during the weekly briefing of the PTF in Abuja.
He said: “There have been agitations for us to open Port Harcourt, Enugu and Kano and of course, it takes a tremendous amount of work, appropriation in the management of this virus to be able to open ore departure up other areas of entry.
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“We will do only at a time what will be good for the management of this virus, it is very painful especially for us in civil aviation to have our airports closed and our direct source of income affected as we are finding it extremely difficult to pay salaries.
“So, we shut down the airport with great care and when we shut down the airports, we had to keep them running otherwise the facilities in there will get dilapidated for lack of usage. So, it is in our interest to keep them open but unfortunately, we couldn’t because of our collective health and goods of the country and those that do business with Nigeria.
“Now that we have most of the things in place due to the work by the PTF, we will be opening Enugu airport on the 3rd of May 2012. We will be opening Kano on the 5th of April, 2021 and Port Harcourt on the 15th of April, 2021 for international flights.”
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