Barrister Babatunde Irukera,the Director General, Consumer Protection Council,CPC, has disclosed that infrastructure and regulatory bottlenecks are major problems of airlines as revealed in a meeting with the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA and operators.
Irukera, speaking in Lagos, at the 22nd seminar of the League of Airports and Aviation Correspondents LAAC, said
that infrastructure and regulatory bottlenecks are major problems of airlines as revealed in a meeting with the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA and operators.
Adding that urgent steps must be taken to ensure that consumers do not become apprehensive using the airports.
“I sat in a meeting with NCAA and airlines operators and obviously the meeting was a collaborative meeting on how to address consumer issues in the industry. And what I seem to be hearing from a lot of the airlines, were there are challenges on how they do their work, infrastructural challenges, regulatory bottlenecks”.
If you have the best airports but there poor responsiveness, then consumers will still be displeased.
And airline industry is one place where you can easily satisfy consumers. Nobody wants to fly when it is unsafe to fly”, he added.
He also urged airlines to come up with appropriate mechanism for people to call in and have complaints resolved and when there is a delay, they should ensure it is for legitimate reasons and they responsiveness and sensitivity to the issues must be such that they are upfront, provide the information and then provide options or find a way to mitigate whatever the inconveniences that consumers will experience.
Irukera however applauded the Federal Government’s waiver of Value Added Tax, VAT for domestic airlines in the country, stressing that it will translate to a better experience for consumers and fairer pricing.
On service delivery by airlines, he noted that in recent times, there has been a significant improvement but though there are still some challenges, but airlines must resolve to do their best in giving consumers a good experience.
“Regardless of all these challenges, I think that airlines have to measure their responsiveness and sensitivity indexes with respect to their consumers”.
