PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences ISSN 2454-5899 Available Online at: http://grdspublishing.org/ 77 Abdullahi et al., 2018 Volume 4 Issue 1, pp. 77-86 Date of Publication: 16 th March 2018 DOI-https://dx.doi.org/10.20319/pijss.2018.41.7786 This paper can be cited as: Abdullahi, M. A., Adesogan, A. A., & Alhaji, A. G. (2018). The Economic and Social Benefits of Air Transportation to Tourism in Nigeria. PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences, 4(1), 77-86. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA. THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL BENEFITS OF AIR TRANSPORTATION TO TOURISM IN NIGERIA Mohammed Awwal Abdullahi Department of Leisure and Tourism Management The Federal Polytechnic Mubi, Nigeria abuihsaan76@gmail.com Adeniyi Adeola Adesogan Department of Leisure and Tourism Management The Federal Polytechnic Mubi, Nigeria adeniyiadesogan@gmail.com Abdullahi Garba Alhaji Department of Leisure and Tourism Management The Federal Polytechnic Mubi, Nigeria aishtata@yahoo.com Abstract The increasing accessibility of air flight has significantly widened air industry’s role in our contemporary social settings. As aircraft is no more an expensive valuable but rather a necessity. The aviation sector has not only support wealth generation in the advanced nations, but has also bought humongous impacts to advanced industrialization by tapping their endowment for business and tourism .The paper has kept us informed on about economic and social impact of aviation industry to tourism and its immensely offers to employment opportunities and Gross Domestic Products (GDP).As this information will furnish government and the aviation sector to take better steps to make sure air travel is continuous and tourism remains indefinite. Also other sectors are valuable to economical welfare of a country as air industry. Transportation is a main reason in forming people’s Social, Economic and Cultural