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Airlines audit will restore confidence in air travel – Akinkuotu

By BusinessNews Staff on February 24, 2014

As the ongoing audit of domestic airlines in Nigeria continues to generate interest, the Director General of the Authority, Captain Fola Akinkuotu believes the exercise will restore passenger confidence in the aviation industry, reports Chinedu Eze

There are two major nagging issues among others that inhibit improved air transport in Nigeria. One is how to ensure safe operation by putting an end to air crashes. The other is how to improve services so that the customer gets value for his money.
Many air travellers in Nigeria live in fear of air accidents, which is exacerbated any time they board flight for local destinations. Some Nigerians will start praying from take-off to landing of their flight, while some others become timorous at any little turbulence.
To eliminate this fear and restore confidence among travellers, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) must effectively carry out its regulatory function, which is to ensure that every aircraft that takes off in the country is airworthy; that airlines carry out proper maintenance of their airplanes and that their cockpit and cabin crew are well trained.

Audit of Airlines
The Director General of NCAA, Captain Fola Akinkuotu, in a recent interview spoke about the audit of airlines, which is the examination of airlines operations in terms of equipment, maintenance profile, training and skilled manpower. NCAA had to ensure that the airlines abide by the strict regulations to ensure safe operations.
Late last year, NCAA carried out an audit of Dana Air in collaboration with international aviation experts. The programme was supposed to have progressed towards the audit of all airlines in scheduled operation in the country. But so far only Dana Air has been successfully audited.

Akinkuotu promised that the schedule for the audit of other airlines would be made public soon, explaining that the audit team stopped after auditing Dana Air because of Yuletide.
“The audit schedule will come out soon. At the time we did the Dana audit, we did it in collaboration with other people. But we had a challenge after Dana Airlines because we could not do the number of airlines that we had planned, but we have already drawn up a programme so that we can audit all the airlines now.”
He said Dana Air had successfully completed its audit as the first airline to go through such audit and others would follow suit, insisting that all the airlines in the country would go through the audit.
“I know that the airlines are themselves embracing the International Civil Aviation Organisation (IATA) Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) and that is the way to go,” he said.

IOSA is the safety audit that must be passed by airlines before becoming IATA member and according to the CEO of IATA, Tony Tyler, fewer IATA member airlines are involved in air accidents because of recommended high safety standards by the Association.
Registration of New Airlines
Many airlines have started the process of obtaining Air Operator Certificate (AOC) so that they can start scheduled operation like Aero, Arik and others. Many believe that this would drive up competition and bring down the fares for the benefit of air travellers.
Akinkuotu acknowledged that many airlines wished to join the market and noted that this would be good for domestic air travel.
“A lot of people want to come into the airline business but it is just a matter of process and it is that process that the NCAA has in place and many of them are at different stages of passing the process. I know that one airline like Discovery Air, Azman Air and another airline called Air Peace and so on are going through that process, so quite a number of them are in different stages.

Noting that it was what Nigerians wanted, he said: “We want more airlines so that we can create capacity and be able to provide better services and then create competition having in mind that it will benefit the customers. That is what we want.”

Interlining for Domestic Carriers
After the Associated Aviation flight crash in October last year, the Director General in his major media chat, said that Nigerian airlines should be made to interline, which is a kind of partnership that makes it possible for passengers that bought the tickets of one airline to be able to travel with the flight of another airline. The two or more airlines involved would later reconcile the tickets and fares with a clearance house usually organised by IATA for international, long haul service.
Akinkuotu observed that while it is a commendable thing to do he said that the airlines would not be bulldozed into interlining. He also disclosed that IATA is putting up a pioneer clearing house for domestic operators in Nigeria to facilitate the interlining among domestic operators.

“If you recall during a recent ministerial meeting, one of the airlines official had said, in response to my speech at the event that the airlines would not be bulldozed into interlining with other airlines; but we are working on it. The idea is to bring all the airlines together and let them see the benefit of it. There are instances where we have asked the airlines to voluntarily comply with this situation but it has been difficult and they have not done so but we want to bring them together again and show them the benefits of inter lining.”
He remarked that quite often airlines think that “when they interline they might be losing money but when we have that understanding I think that we can make this interlining process work.”
Akinkuotu stated that not interlining among airlines was not good for the economy, noting that the number of people that travel by air in Nigeria are very few, considering the population of the country and because of uncertainty associated with domestic flights, some passengers would buy two or more tickets from different airlines, so that if one was not going to fly they would use the ticket of another airline that would be ready to fly at that point in time.
Enforcement of Passenger Bill of Rights
On Passengers Bill of Rights, Akinkuotu said NCAA had sanctioned airlines that breached the rules in protecting the interest of the passengers, regretting that most often when passengers are ill-treated by airlines they do not report such cases to the regulatory authority
“Passengers have the right to report to us but sometimes they don’t know the process and that is why we have been carrying out sensitisation programme. Earlier in the year, we did some road shows and we are going to continue.
“There will be some audio visual systems or announcement in the airport to let passengers realise that they do have rights. However, not just passengers; we must be able to sensitise all stakeholders just like we go to the airlines and expect them to respect their contract,” the director general said.
He however, warned that both the airlines and the passengers should respect their contract.
“If you buy a ticket as passenger and the time of departure is 11am and you are coming at 1pm, that cannot work .We have cases where refuellers will not give fuel at the appropriate time and this can cause delay or baggage handling company fails to deliver the baggage in time; you know, we have to get the whole system working.”
He said that recently Aero Contractors was sanctioned by NCAA which directed the airline to compensate passengers who were delayed for hours and others that were denied their flights.
“Airlines should tell the passengers when they have issues that will make them delay flights. They should also let NCAA know if they have a defect in their aircraft. Of course, NCAA would not allow them to fly an aircraft that is technically deficient, but they will have to communicate it to the customers. If an airplane has a snag (technical issues) you should report to passengers.
We are trying our best and some of the airlines are keeping to maintaining such rights of the passengers and we at NCAA are going to make sure that passengers know their rights and we are going to use some audio media system which will be stationed at the airport announcement desks to make the passengers know that they do have rights.”

Economic Regulation
NCAA also plans to carry out economic regulation of airlines to ensure that they have the funds to adequately maintain their aircraft, carry out their operations and pay their workers.
“What we want is to do financial audit of the airlines on regular basis. Airlines are supposed to file their financial reports. From what we have, they are able to operate but the issue that quite often faces them is that some of them don’t pay their staff salaries. It is difficult for you to read it out from their report whether salaries are paid to their staff or not.
“If you submit a report to me, it may not show that you haven’t paid but you will also expect a feedback. I discussed with The National Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers (NAAPE) recently and told them that they can come to us. We can keep their privacy. We will protect their privacy and we would go to the airline if it is true. This is because in the past NCAA had intervened,” Akinkuotu said.

[This Day]

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