Airports, airlines systems bane of travelling public
By Chukwuemeke Iwelunmo
It has been asserted that for an average Nigerian passenger to get to his destination on time without fear of disappointment, he or she needs to buy more than one ticket.
Ikechi Uko, a travel enthusiast, frequent flyer and organiser, Chinet AviaCargo Conference made this assertion while speaking on the theme: “Aviation Industry: Changing Times, Changing Strategies.
According to Uko, frequent flyers in the country are the ones worse hit when airlines and the entire airport system fail to live up to the standards of being the fastest means of transportation.
Beyond that, he said the airports were failing to make facilitation, the key subject matter of Aviation, seamless with deteriorating infrastructure: limited boarding gates, bad baggage claim and the likes which equally strains airlines too.
” The Nigerian passenger has not been served well as at today. If you cannot buy all those tickets and have options, you have to fly from here to Abuja and now come back to Lagos because you couldn’t get that flight connection. I don’t see any system where that will work very well. So if you are talking about changing time and changing strategies, I don’t think we have started the discussion.
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“In 2004 when I started going to Ghana by Nigerian airlines, the experience I had then is probably better than what I am experiencing now as a traveller. So anything we are discussing and we are not talking about how to improve the experience of the traveller, is a complete waste, because the traveller today is not being served well. This is just what happened to me”.
He narrated how his flight from Abuja was delayed thrice and eventually cancelled at midnight stating that the experience for regular flyers is quite frustrating.
“So, for those of us that travel every other day, it is a bad experience. I would like to be patriotic and support the Nigerian airline and the players but if you know what some of us have to go through, I don’t think we are having the right discussion.”
