- Poor services reflect negatively on our brands’-Operators
AIRLINES operating from the Murtala Muhammed Airport Terminal 2 (MMA2) are miffed at what they described as appalling services from the terminal operator with the breakdown of the terminal’s conveyor belt and other service facilities which has caused countless delays to flight operations despite paying over N4500 passenger service charge(PSC).
The airlines are equally wary that the capacity crunch created by these service challenges will only tell on the airlines and not the airport operator as passengers who do not know the difference would rather attack the brand they have paid direct to procure their services and not the root cause.
Some Air Peace, Arik Air flights operate from the terminal and so also do Dana Air, Max Air, Ibom Air, Azman Air, Aero Contractors, United Nigeria Airlines all operate from the terminal.
Among some of the complaints are poor bus services, hot departure hall, bad and obsolete conveyor belt which they claim, breaks down daily. Others are ramp congestion as Apron design approved for 14 aircraft parks over 24 aircraft all these leading to a minimum of two hour delay daily, without compensation.
Already trending videos are showing the complete melee at the terminal which has led to flight delays, some operators complain that there is congestion at the screening points stressing that BASL has five (5)screening areas of which only two are operational causing massive congestion. According to them BASL services are killing their operations.
Incidentally flights have surged due to the Yuletide, but airlines are saying the terminal operator should have made provision for better capacity to handle the surging traffic.
They stressed that if one of the thirteen (13) passenger touch points is impeded by poor service delivery, the entire value chain is affected and this tells badly on the airline brand as passengers tend to identify that as a reason to characterize the brand as a delay brand.
One stakeholder said,” PSC is now N4,500 and the challenges have been on for over three years and every time airlines complain, they say they are doing something about it and also they are awaiting approval from their headquarters to change conveyor belts and that is always the excuse, that there is no approval yet.”
“It delays flights (Conveyor belts), destroys passengers’ bags and ends up with delays that cause cancellation for airports that have sunset limitations.”
The airlines complain that they constantly bear the brunt of the passengers as BASL operators of MMA2 do not compensate either airline or passenger
