Nigerian Flight Deck Travel and Business Reportage
DECEMBER 2018 saw a record total passenger traffic at the General Aviation Terminal (GAT) hit 228, 239 with inbound passengers at the terminal standing at 104,168 while a total of 124,071 passengers were processed out during the period under review.
These statistics were made available by the Terminal Manager of the GAT, Mr Aderigbigbe Adekunle, who said the management of the terminal before the Yuletide took several measures aimed at ensuring seamless passenger facilitation by servicing the conveyor belts, cooling systems and screening machines.
Adekunle said that the upsurge in passenger traffic was envisaged hence it was seamless passenger’s facilitation while some flights were moved to a less busy terminal for easy passenger facilitation.
“We have two terminals here, the Zulu and Alfa, what we did was to move some flights from the busy terminal to the less busy terminal for passengers comfort. Calabar, Port Harcourt and Uyo flights were moved to the Zulu terminal to ease the Alfa traffic where Airpeace operates from”
According to Mr. Adekunle, the Agege motor road construction work almost marred the airport free flow of traffic as the construction work had a spilled over to domestic airport users but remarked that it was carefully handled by FAAN officials at they terminal end.
“The only challenge was the construction work on the Agege motor road, passengers find it difficult to to move out of the terminal to connect to Agege motor road. The traffic extended to the terminal and passengers expressed bitter experience during the Yuletide period”
The Terminal Manager also revealed that the automation of the domestic car park by FAAN early last year brought sanity to the area as some people who were not travellers took undue advantage of the non automation of the park to leave their vehicles there.
He said with the billing system introduced, the number of vehicles at the park had gradually reduced through proper monitoring.
Mr Adekunle while acknowledging the small size of the domestic car park, explained further that there was plan by the management of FAAN to construct a new multi storey car park at the domestic Wing noting that when completed will cater for the decongestion of traffic at the terminal.
On the indiscriminate washing of vehicles by the domestic airport car hire operators at the park, the manager noted that the management will continue to sensitize them on the need to use the designated car wash area at the park.
He explained that touting activities have been reduced at the airport with various arrest made on daily basis by FAAN security personnel warning that anyone caught touting within the airport will be apprehended and handed over to the law enforcement agents.
He expressed appreciation to the management of FAAN for the evacuation order that led to the removal of all abandoned aircraft from the tarmac which has created enough space at the domestic end of the tarmac.
