Pressured to find a solution to the controversial crisis rocking the foreign airlines’ trapped funds in the country, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Friday released the sum of about $265 million to airlines operating in the country, to settle outstanding ticket sales. A breakdown of the figure indicates that the sum of $230 million was released as a special FX intervention while another sum of $35 million was released through the Retail SMIS auction. With the release of the amount, operators and travellers will now heave huge sighs of relief in terms of running their operations. Due to their inability to repatriate their ticket sales, Emirates had earlier last week threatened to suspend all flights from Nigeria, effective from 1st September, 2022. Similarly, there were indications that British Airways was equally considering suspending operations in Nigeria from December 2022 if payment of its trapped funds in the country is not paid.

Source: Nigerian Tribune August 27, 2022 02:28 UTC