Determined to give the travelling public the needed value for their money through seamless travels, the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), under the leadership of Captain Chris Najomo, has created a portal where passengers can lay their complaints and get results amidst incessant flight delays and cancellations by airlines.
In an interactive session with journalists in Lagos, Najomo revealed that the portal would go live in the next three months, even as he defended the airlines, saying no airline wants to deliberately delay passengers or cancel flights.
He equally used the opportunity to hint of the Federal Government’s plans to provide night landing facilities in some of the aerodromes, to enable airlines to have extended hours of operations.
Najomo said he had met with the airlines since he assumed his new position to address the issue of sunset airports and how it could upgrade such airports to 24-hour operations.
He said, “Talking about delays and cancellations, if you must know, when a delay happens, consumer protection officer on duty will investigate thoroughly the cause of that delay before any pronouncement is made and you all know that of course, most times, or sometimes these delays are not the fault of the airlines.
“But for those delays that are by the airlines, we begin to ask them what happened and giving compensation to their passengers, like first two hours you must serve refreshment. After two or three hours, you must refund cash if they have bought their ticket by cash or if you bought your ticket online, it takes 14 days to get your cash for refund. These are stated categorically in the Act. You must follow it to ensure that all these are actualised.
“We are not just protecting the airlines, we are also protecting the passengers. That is why we do an enlightenment campaign and at times you see people walking to the airport 20 minutes to departure and when they are denied boarding they start complaining. Who is at fault? Some airlines automatically do what is called give refund and others give 50 percent of the reduced fares as compensation.”
He revealed how uncomfortable the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr Festus Keyamo, is about flight delays and cancellations and subsequently asked what can be done to ameliorate the sufferings of many Nigerian travellers.
“We told him that another way is to create a portal whereby consumers can make their complaints and get results. The portal will come live in the next three months. No airline wants to delay. No airline wants to sell tickets and delay. There are so many other things that the government is looking at.
“Talking about sunset airports, we have sat down with the airlines severally to talk about going to sunset airports and upgrading the airports to 24 hours or at night. It is ongoing right now. There is a lot of sensitisation that we are putting in place. You have a lot of passengers who do not know their rights; they don’t read the rights. In the ticket, there are rules on them. When they are denied boarding that is when they start complaining. For us in NCAA, a lot is being done at the moment,” he said.
Najomo used the opportunity to invite all stakeholders to join him in making it easier to reposition the sector through the President Bola Tinubu’s transformation agenda for the sector.
