The Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, on Sunday recorded a drop in passenger movement ahead of the New year celebration.

Most passengers in the past few days suffered flight delays and cancellations due to bad weather conditions across the country.

Few flight announcements were made while fewer passengers were seen at the arrival and departure sections, NAN reports.

Domestic airlines booking and check-in counters were virtually empty.

Most passengers traveled between Friday and Saturday, according to airline staff.

Some disclosed that they have not been operating full flights because of the number of passengers had dropped.

The Station Manager, Azman Air, Mr Abdullahi Saroke, said that only few flights had departed or arrived the airport since Sunday morning.

Bad weather condition was also another factor that had also affected flights, according to Saroke; adding that Yola and Maiduguri flights had yet to take off due of poor visibility.

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The “weekend before the New Year holiday,” he said, was also responsible for the low traffic.

“Azman’s Lagos flight for 1:00 pm will not depart till evening because there are no passengers on ground.

“What is going to happen is that we are going to operate a connecting flight by combining passengers from Yola, Maiduguri and Abuja on one flight to Lagos.

“Many airlines are also doing same because it is not economically good to fly few passengers on board.

People are still on holidays and as such we were not expecting much; but from Tuesday, we will be having much of arrivals,” he said.

While decrying 2017 as not being a good year for airlines, Saroke expressed optimism that 2018 would see business go up.

(Source: NAN)