INTERVIEW: Airlines Shouldn’t Take Blame for Weather,Visibility Induced Delays – Achimugu
In this interview monitored on Africa Independent Television (AIT) ,Michael Achimugu, Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) Director of Public Affairs and Consumer Protection speaks on recent activities of the aviation industry regulator and government plans for expansion relying on public private partnership
Q: Bring us to speed with your recent activities and how you arrived at announcing sanctions for erring airlines?
We have never failed to admit the fact that there is a capacity problem. There weren’t just enough aircraft in Nigeria to carry people for various reasons, however that problem has now been resolved. Last month December, 10 new aircrafts came into the country.
Again, in December, everybody knows that weather is a problem and visibility is very poor, especially to certain destinations in the country.It is the reason why airlines don’t get sanctioned a lot of times when these delays happen. How do you punish someone for weather related issues?
Two weeks ago , I announced the initiation of sanctions against five Airlines in Nigeria. It is first time from the Consumer Protection perspective that the NCAA is sanctioning Airlines in for over a decade and that is because we have spent the first year in office, trying to understand the issues in the industry and now we can see if it is the airline’s fault or not.
That is why it was easy for some of the airlines to come out and accept the sanctions without any opposition at all. This is coupled with the fact that sometimes we have facility constraints. There are 13 local airlines in Nigeria and if they own six aircrafts each for example, where will they Park?
It is part of the reasons why I always educate passengers. I always tell them that not all of these issues are the fault of the airlines. On the government’s side, there are issues as well but thankfully, now that the CTC has been signed, the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development , Festus Keyamo is bringing in more planes and he’s looking at dealing with the facility problems.
Q:We know more planes are coming on ground like you said but the facility to accommodate the ones that are here is not enough . Do we hope to see anything different this year and how soon?
The Minister has been very vocal about this. He’s in conversation with a lot of world class companies that are lining up and trooping into the country to do business with us. We are looking at selecting the very best of them. He doesn’t want to make mistakes. Let’s expect that in the first quarter of this year.
Q:I see some kind of collaboration between some local airlines and some foreign Airlines.Is that also a part of expansion and how is this helping the sector as well?
It is part of the gains from the work that the Honorable Minister has done. Emirates came in and signed some agreement with some local carriers so that they can protect their passengers when the need arises.
It is good for the country and it is a business after all. It’s also shows that some of our Airlines do have capacity contrary to what a lot of people think.
Q:You spoke about Airlines having capacity, what about the government side because shortage can be a major factor.Sometimes you enter into airport terminals and there’s confusion with huge crowd and there’s few people to process passengers.
Aviation is very expensive. There is no way that the government alone will be able to fund this expansion. That’s the reason why the Minister is discussing with a lot of companies so we can go into PPP arrangement and get to the level we want to get to. These are not things to be done overnight.
The Minister has been here for less than 2 years and he has done a great work so far. He has promised that very soon the result of these conversations, with these companies will become manifest.
Q:Tell us a bit more about the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) because in that sector , we saw that it was also introduced. How does this benefit Nigerians?
Captain Chris Najomo is the DG NCAA and he is a very proactive person. There has been the need to improve the quality of service to Nigerian passengers. Data collation has been one of the biggest problems in aviation because without accurate data, we cannot plan and strategize.With this FDR we are able to simulate incidence when they happen .
