The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, has disclosed plans to install alternative power systems at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, MMIA, Lagos in order to improve the poor air conditioning system at the terminal.
The General Manager, Corporate Communications, Mr. Yakubu Dati told journalists in Lagos that the agency had already awarded the contract to a firm, saying that the alternative power systems would support the new air-conditioning system when the regular electricity supply to the airport fails..
According to Dati, the management was aware of the poor air-conditioning at the airport and had taken measures to speedily address the problem by aggressively pushing the contractor working on this to quickly complete the job.
Dati insisted that in the last couple of years, the government had made tremendous progress at most of the nation’s airports, which included the expansion of the lounge area, the increase of passenger handling points and installation of new luggage processing conveyor systems, which he said could handle about 1,000 passengers per hour at the General Aviation Terminal, GAT, of the Lagos airport.
On the poor rating of the airport by an international survey organization, ‘People who sleep in airports,’ Dati pointed out that the aviation agencies are not the only companies responsible for the convenience of passengers, saying that other agencies like the Nigerian Immigration Services, NIS, the Nigerian Customs, and staff of various airlines and other service providers at the airports have the statutory duties to perform at any airports across the country.
Dati decried that the website was only looking at the comfort of passengers at the airport terminals, ignoring several other key parameters such as presence of advanced navigational equipment and security measures, which he said are typically used by quality journals and aviation agencies globally, to rate airports.
He added, “What this means is that the totality of passenger experience at the airports is a collective responsibility of everyone involved in providing one service or the other, which obviously goes beyond government agencies alone.
“All Nigerians and other people working at our various airports both international and domestic, bear the responsibility of ensuring that their customers have the most pleasant experiences at our airports. It is not the responsibility of government alone.”
Dati further recalled that Nigerian airports recently passed the Category One re-Certification audit conducted by the US Federal Aviation Authority, FAA, which is one of the most rigorous aerospace/airport audits in the world, stressing that without high safety standards, the nation would have failed the recertification.
