Aviation Transport

Airlines business, airports experience module must change beyond 2025- CPC

The Consumers Protection Council (CPC) on Thursday called for change in the airlines business and airports experience in Nigeria beyond 2025.

The CPC Director-General, Mr Babatunde Irukera, made the call at the Fourth Quarter Business Breakfast Meeting organised by the Aviation Safety Round Table Initiative (ASRTI) in Lagos.

The theme of the meeting was: “Nigerian Aviation Beyond 2025’’.

Irukera said: “For profitability, airline business modules must change; secondly, airports experience must change beyond 2025.

“This is because airport all over the world today have now become a comfort zone and not a travel port.

“There are far more commercial managers than commercial attenders in JFK, DBX; then, we have security and customs put together.

“There are more shops at these airport than we have offices and the amount of retail business that is going on at these airports is in excess of what aviation gets.’’

The director-general said that FAAN management must make airport places where people want to go and be before passengers took their flights.

He said with the record of delay in the airports across the country, Nigeria still record one of the highest numbers of no show of people arriving for their flights.

Irukera said traffic in Lagos was not different from the ones in New York, noting that average travellers was gaining the situation and arrived at the airport just prior to departure.

According to him, even, the premium class, which is the VIP sittings, is not comfortable enough to the general sitting experience in other country’s airports and now imagine the general passengers.

Irukera said all the passenger want to do was to arrive at the airport and be able to get through the security checkpoints and then proceed to boarding.

“So, this is what we will compete in 2025 and beyond, because we must be able to transform our aviation so that it can stimulate business.

“We still have a challenge to grow our domestic airlines in the country,” he said.

On his parts, the ASRTI President, Dr Gabriel Olowo, expressed his worried about the government intervention in aviation and airlines when the country’s capital expenditure stood at 20 per cent.

“To express my worry about intervention by government, in the budget for 2020, 80 per cent is for the recurrent, while 20 per cent, meaning that we have little or nothing, for capital development.

“We have a deficit budget, meaning that we have element of debt; so, if we are not able to provide what we need on the road and security.

“Then, why bothers on intervention when private sector investors are eager to help us out.

“Should government continues to borrow where private investors can help?

“We have government intervention in our airport. Also, we have government intervention on our airlines that are capital intensive, that is what worries me,” he said.

Olowo said in the last five years in this regime, how had the airlines and airport fair ?

He said if the country go private, like government promised to concessioning the airport, then, it would be better and faster for the industry.

 

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