Airline stops flight to Nigeria in June

United Airlines 787 Dreamliner has resolved to stop flying to Nigeria in June, a move that will end the carrier’s only route to Africa.

In a memo to employees, the airlines cited poor financial performance and weakness in the energy sector for ending the route. Both Houston and Lagos are key centers for the oil and energy markets.

The airline currently offers nonstop service to Lagos, Nigeria, from its hub at Houston Bush Intercontinental Airport. But it was learnt that it  would discontinue the those flights at the end of June, eventually shifting the Boeing 787 Dreamliner used on the Nigeria flights to add additional frequencies on a route the carrier recently launched between San Francisco and Tel Aviv in Israel.

United’s exit will leave Delta as the only U.S. carrier to offer nonstop service between the USA and Africa.

In a statement, the airlines said: “After careful analysis, we have decided to exit the IAH-LOS (Houston Bush Intercontinental-Lagos) route and redeploy the Boeing 787 aircraft where it can capture more profitable demand.

“Our last flights will be June 29 (eastbound) and June 30 (westbound); after that, customers can travel to LOS via our Star Alliance partners.

“The IAH-LOS route has been underperforming financially for several years,” United added. “Because of its importance to key Houston-based customers, we continued to invest in it; however, the recent downturn in the energy sector has caused these customers to spend less on travel.”

United’s new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner at LAX’s Terminal 7, gate 74, on Oct. 26, 2014 prior to launching nonstop service to Melbourne, Australia.  United Airlines

An additional complication has been Nigeria’s move to restrict currency movements out of the country as the decline in oil prices has diminished that nation’s reserves of U.S. currency.

The global International Air Transport Association trade group estimates foreign airlines collectively have about $575 million in airfare currently trapped in Nigeria, it was learnt.

“Since last fall, we have not been able to repatriate revenue sold locally in Nigerian currency and therefore we had to essentially suspend these sales which makes the route unsustainable as about half of the revenue generated by the route comes from Nigeria point-of-sale,” United spokesman,  Jonathan Guerin also said  in a statement .

As for United’s expansion of its San Francisco (SFO)-Tel Aviv (TLV) route, the airline says in its memo that it “will expand from three-times-weekly to daily in October. Demand is high to TLV from both SFO and EWR (Newark), so adding capacity here makes sense.”