THE latest joint oversight visit of the National Assembly committees on aviation to the aviation agencies has come and gone but not without its drama.
Leading the lawmakers were the two chairmen of the senate committee on aviation, Senator Smart Adeyemi and his counterpart in the House of Representatives, Honourable Nnolim Nnaji.
During the visit to the agencies including the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB), Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NIMET) and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the lawmakers were taken through the challenges confronting the agencies and how far they had gone despite the challenges.
The committees at some points frowned at some happenings within the sector, particularly the menace of flight delays and cancellations which they said had made air transport miserable to travellers.
Speaking on behalf of the committees, Senator Smart Adeyemi, who said he was talking on behalf of the traveling public during the visit to the NCAA, decried how Nigerians were increasingly annoyed with the constant flight delays and as such, demanded to know the position of the NCAA towards the issue as the regulatory agency for the entire sector.
According to Adeyemi, “Nigerians are not happy with the way and manner airlines operate in the country. Passengers are left at the mercy of airline operators. Passengers are being delayed at the airport for over five to six hours without apologies or compensation.
“Why would somebody stay at the airport for hours and nobody is talking to you? Currently, the airline operators are making huge money, triple what they were making during COVID-19 but they are capitalising on COVID-19. Passengers are no longer served in the airlines; no courtesy or respect to passengers. All this will have to stop.”
While everyone present during the visit to the NCAA agreed with his complaints to an extent, the atmosphere however changed when Adeyemi went further to warn the operators saying, “If Nigerian airline operators can no longer manage their fleet, it will not be out of place for us to bring foreign companies to run the domestic airlines.”
Besides making this sensitive statement, he went further to promise to release the names of some of the airlines Nigerians should not patronise if the airlines and the NCAA failed to nip in the bud the menace.
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Prior to now, the issue of flight delays and cancellations had become unpleasant hence, a topical issue across the sector as key players kept asking questions on the positions of the airlines and the NCAA regarding passengers rights.
Therefore, while the airline operators owe the travelling public a lot of explanations as to reasons for the disappointment, in doing this, there are better ways of approaching such issues in view of the sensitivity of the sector as it relates to flying.
For the fact that the NCAA as the regulator of civil aviation in the country has not been seen to have physically engaged the airlines on such issues, does not mean it is not making attempts. Its approach to the issue may be in the interest of safety, weighing the consequences of railroading the airlines to taking hasty actions.
The senate aviation committee chairman must have made his statement as a politician forgetting that the aviation sector is run in line with international standards devoid of any local politics.
It is no longer news that the airlines are operating under a very harsh environment with little or no contributions from the government.
Not that the airlines don’t have their own shortcomings as regards their relationships with passengers when such issues crop up, but it was not fair to threaten the operators with foreign airlines invasion of the domestic scene as declared by Senator Adeyemi.
Making such inflammatory statements was enough to discourage operators who despite the unfriendly business environment still chose to invest their money in the capital-intensive business.
The contradiction in the position of the lawmaker became manifest in the sense that the Federal Government has not been very supportive of the domestic airlines in so many areas ranging from undue advantages given to foreign airlines, exorbitant prices of aviation fuel, unstable foreign exchange, multiple taxation, among many others.
Therefore, for a government or member of the National Assembly to openly declare his intention to bring foreign companies to displace indigenous companies because of challenges was a great minus which for sure can never happen in saner climes.
Apart from the negative impression this would have created on the struggling domestic airlines outside the country, the statement was an indictment on the aviation authorities who have the statutory responsibilities to regulate the sector.
Time has come for the political class to always watch their outbursts whenever they speak on issues affecting aviation no matter the situation as inflammatory statements will only complicate issues and send wrong signals about the sector to the outside world. There are better and more civilised ways of handling such issues.
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