Mrs. Tosan Duncan Odukoya is the chief operating officer (COO) of the Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited (BASL), operators of the Murtala Muhammed Terminal Two (MMA2), in this interview with Justnet News she maintains that the terminal has the capacity to carry out regional flights and has satisfied the checklist. She therefore called on the necessary authorities to give the nod to BASL in this regard. On delay and cancellation of flights, she said it was unfair to always blame the airlines, noting that what remains paramount is safety. However, she pointed out that no passenger comes to the airport with the aim to become unruly, therefore she proposed and strongly recommended that every stakeholder that has to do anything with aviation must practice the management tool of cascading information downwards in order to avoid keeping passengers in the dark.
Excerpts
Recently, there has been a clamour for regional operations through MMA2, you know this comes with some demands in terms of infrastructure. If you are given the nod, do you have the infrastructure to handle it?
You have asked me a major two-part question, it began with if you get the nod, yes and then it came back to the way of the infrastructure. Let me turn your question upside down and let me say without any shadow of doubt MMA2 was a brilliant project which began back in 2003 and got executed back in 2007 and we’ve been operating for 16 years. Definitely I have said somewhere else that as a domestic terminal we are veterans, we’ve been working on this system trying to get passengers through and out and satisfied for many years.
However, back in 2014 and even from 2007 it was written, that no problem you people can work on regional. At that time I think maybe we talked to ourselves you know what; let’s master the faithful a little, let’s do a little, let’s master this then we can escalate.
But back in 2014 and unfortunately I have to say back because in another two weeks that is 10 solid years that we actually went out there to the authorities and said we are putting up our hands, we want to go regional. They said, do you know if you want to go regional what it means? You must have Immigration, you must have Customs, you must have Port Health, you must have NDLEA, you must have more Police, and you must have more Aviation security. They gave us a long list; you have to have offices, you have to have boots, you have to have sections, and you have to separate this from that.
Oh my goodness you know they gave us a full scale checklist of what it takes for an airport terminal to be deemed a regional, because the moment you go from domestic to regional, regional to international you are dealing with the skies of Nigeria, you are dealing with overflies out of the country, you are dealing with so much more than just within.
Sometimes we boast that we run a system that’s more than a lot of international airports because we run over 45 to 49, 53 sometimes flights a day. We run between 3,009 to 5,001 a day out and in, up to 10,000 sometimes.
We can see it happening and we know we have that capacity. But when it comes to going regional, a big thing happens. Madam, you and I have to bring our international passport out. We have to bring our international health certificate out. You know, all these things have to do with, do we have the ability?
I will say irrevocable yes. Unequivocally, we have it. But what it is, is that first part of your question. If you get the nod. Sometimes you and I, we’ve had children or nieces or nephews and they are now one and a half years old and they say they want to walk. And then we are holding them. And then they are dragging their hands from us, no, no, no. And we are afraid. Or they want to ride a bicycle and we’ll give them the three-wheeler. And then they say, no, no, no, I want the two-wheeler.
It’s a difficult thing to let, as it were to let a baby go because you are worried, can they do it? Will they be able to? So we have been trying to convince the authorities that, let’s do it this way, okay? Let us begin with what I call the November 5. The November 5 is our beloved Nigerian registered carriers, N5. I told them, don’t be afraid.
Why don’t we do it this way? Let’s start with the N5 carriers who are already brave enough to hit the skies outside of Lagos and outside of Nigeria. These are our Nigerian registered carriers that carry regional flights. The reason I’m saying this is because it starts from somewhere.
Number two, we have our brother and our parent body, which is the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria that actually oversees a lot of our regulatory work, and we are just a terminal. And we told them, we consider you as the captain of this football pitch, let’s say. But there are times when one player is down, okay? Yes. Now, if one player is down, we have been on the sidelines waiting, trained, ready, but you didn’t call us up. Sometimes they go there with 21 men. You only need 11 men, but sometimes you are down to 10 men for injury, or you are down to nine men because of injury or somebody was out. So what do you do? You call on your reservist.
We’ve been there waiting in the reserve for 10 years, ready. We can do it. So what can we do except to say, let’s go through what the regulatory bodies are looking for. Have we satisfied that checklist? Yes. Which other checklists have we satisfied? The biggest one we are coming back with is, it’s called the single hub system. What does a single hub mean? It means that an airline that is maybe a Nigerian carrier who has their hub with one area, and that’s where they operate to Uyo, or they operate to Asaba, or they operate to Owerri, or Abuja, or the north, anywhere in Nigeria. We, the MMA2, has been the gateway to over 36 states for this time.
Now, they have to go to another part and then operate out there to maybe Monrovia, or Freetown, or Abidjan, or Accra. So now, put 50 workers there, put another 50 workers here, be shuttling them forwards and backwards. Okay, where do we put the internet system? Where should we put the machines?
And then they’re running two separate offices when they can run one. So that’s the hub, single hub. Okay. And what we are requesting is, why don’t we save money for our own? You see, I’ve always said, profit is equal to income, less cost. Simple and straightforward. Everybody learnt it in class two. But what we are trying to say is, if it is so difficult to get more and more income, let us save cost. We can still make it to the finish line.
So what we are proposing is, we beseech of all the relevant and all the necessary regulatory bodies that will allow MMA2 to go regional to listen to our cry for the sake of our own brothers in the same airline industry that are ready and waiting for us, because it’s not up to them. If they are given that nod to, they said, listen we love to have a single hub system. It saves us a lot of money. It makes it so much easier for our staff, allows us to be able to operate from one place, left or right. Like I said, Accra to Asaba, or Meduguri to Monrovia. You know, it’s amazing, whereby somebody is coming from Port Harcourt, but they’re actually going to Liberia, and they stay there. You understand? So please, we wish the message would go out. We are good and ready. We have the capacity. We have the infrastructure. And we wish we will be given that nod.
At the end of the day, what we are doing is just getting ourselves ready. What we are saying to the airlines, airlines, you know that we are here for you. Please, you can start asking for it? We are saying to the regulatory bodies, regulatory bodies, we are here for you, please. We are talking to everybody to say that, come, come and check and test us and allow us.
Like I said, let us go. We are little babies. We can walk. We will make it. You know, we will ride the bicycle perfectly because we have been gearing up the sidelines. Training, training, training. So please, let the message go out. We are good and ready.
It’s Yuletide, we know normally during this period there will be a lot of traffic. So how are prepared are you in handling the heavy traffic flow?
We were not just prepared for the incoming traffic. We’re excited about it. And we love the inflow of travelling public because it gives us that opportunity to thank them for working and walking with us the entire year. So when it comes to end of year, we rather, you know, as they say in Yoruba, we prepare for because we start preparing.
We start making sure we’re ready. We beef up our baggage control systems, our escalators. We go in, we call all the stakeholders that work with us on our lifts, escalators, on our ceiling, and all of our technical staff. We make sure they come out of the system completely.
In addition to that, in August, we said to ourselves, we’ve been at this 16 years, this is our 16th year birthday. It’s good to say, we even themed it sweet 16. But what does it do? It comes with responsibility. You know, it comes with the first stage of adulthood. So we said to ourselves, we must not have a situation where we are called to action in the wrong way. We must be able to hold up our responsibility for what we do
We created an acronym and we created a task force called PPPP – Peak Period Preparatory Plan since August. And it had a strategy whereby we were starting with ordering parts that come from abroad. A lot of people don’t realise to keep the world-class facility that we are running at MMA2, it is important that we bring to bear.
A lot of our spare parts, they are, as we call it, over here, they are dollarised. They come from far to run the roller systems, that run the x-ray machines, to run the shutter systems that run the avio-bridge, to run the escalators and the lifts and the lighting and all sorts of things.
We also improved on our technology so that the passenger flow is faster, it is seamless. I’ll speak more on that later, it has to do with our technological system. We improved on our training, communication and we are working on what we call a de-escalation system of crowd control so we are working with our aviation security guys, we are working with the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, the consumer protection unit because they are actually responsible for the passenger.
They are in charge of the passenger it is just that I’m the facilitator that allows them to be processed through this terminal building but a passenger when he’s in his house takes a decision to fly on x, y or z aircraft and then they are processed and they come here but the Nigerian Civil Aviation is in charge of them when it comes to making sure that the right thing is being done with their safety, their security and their satisfaction. So we work with them, we called them in and we had what we call a terminal stakeholders summit; called it a mini summit.
We called them in and they came with the airlines, they came with all the guys who handle baggage systems, that’s SAHCO and NAHCO and all the other guys. I mean these are people that we have worked shoulder to shoulder with, for the past 10 to 15 years, a lot of us know one another overtime because we’ve been doing it yearly but this year is special because we’ve put together this package which is talking to one another not just us physically talking to one another but we are allowing our systems to work together.
However, the governing body which is the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) clause 19 deals with the responsibilities of the airline towards the passenger and the rights of the passenger when it comes to travel delays, disruptions and diversions. So we have always coined it as the 3ds; there might be a delay, there might be a disruption or a diversion. Remember that we are dealing with weather, we are dealing with systems where the skies could be shut for one reason or other.
It’s not just it is the airline’s fault, very unfair for us to think that way, we must think safety, we must think security, we must think customer service. When it comes to these things it is not always the airline that is at fault, no. there are other factors so we need to be able to categorise what sort of a delay is it.
Is it a creeping delay, is it a sudden delay, is it something that’s going to be a night stop or are we talking of over two hours, over four hours? There are different categories. So all we want to do is study again what the rules and regulations and what the rules of engagement are when it comes to this thing and then slot in where we belong so you’ll find a situation where maybe because of the weather the crew could not get to the airplane, do you blame the airplane or do you blame the weather for example?
Or because of a situation where the skies were closed or the runways were closed you are now going to an airport which does not accommodate a night flight, whose fault is it? Do you understand? So it’s difficult to say always don’t mind these airlines, no, we work hand in hand with them, we work shoulder to shoulder so what we did was we huddled ourselves inside, no passenger near us hearing us and we struggled it out together, we agreed we said no, this is what we should do.
Again if the airline finds themselves in a situation where their flight has been delayed to a system where it’s now 10 pm at night, Madam put yourself in a customer’s shoes we’ve kept him here it has been a creeping delay. It is not really this person’s fault, it’s not that person’s fault, then people start shouting you are supposed to give me hotel, where is my hotel? At 11 pm at night, at MMA2 Ikeja? My terminal by the grace of the Almighty is safe but when you step outside of my territory can I be sure of your safety?
If I say okay take money go to hotel now I would not also want to do that but am I also equipped with a nice soft bed for you to sleep in my terminal? I’m in a dilemma, what do I do? How do I work with the airlines? How do I work on the safety of my customers? These are all factors that if you don’t put them together, understand the mitigation, understand the legal, understand the customer experience, the customer service, understand safety and security; until and unless you do that you will not have a situation where you are assured of the paramount safety and security of the customer. So a lot of stuff we have to think about but we’re trying our best.
This informs why passengers at times become unruly. How do you handle that?
It’s not fair to say they are unruly let’s be realistic; you know me and my passengers; my passengers they cannot do any bad in my eyes but at the same time when there’s a situation that leads to what I call frustration and fracas, when there is situation where they (the passengers) are not being communicated with properly, where there’s a situation where they are not being updated properly or a situation where they feel neglected; listen no passenger wants to get into an airplane that’s not safe or go to a destination that is not safe. Do you understand? So every passenger I’ve always said is reasonable to a point.
So what are we doing to de-escalate situations, what are we doing to manage conflict, what are we doing to negotiate, what are we doing to give them communication and a heads up? That is what we have to ask ourselves because you know you saying that you cannot treat me like that but you are the same person saying to the customer it’s not my fault you know or giving them unreasonable information. So we again like I told you we worked from within. We said to ourselves what are we doing about ensuring that the customer does not get to a point where he becomes unruly, nobody gets up from their house, leaves their house coming here in order to become unruly.
We saw a situation on the international scene just a few days ago with a sporting situation with football where the President of the whole football federation got onto the tarmac, I call it tarmac because I’m a tarmac person. He got out to the football pitch and there were some fracas, when he was interviewed he said I never went onto that football pitch with the intention to slap the referee. Can you imagine? That was something that really helped me to understand where we are when it comes to how we are dealing with situations; what leads up to making a passenger unruly, that’s where we have to step in. Instead of trying to be reactive let us be proactive, that’s what we’ve got to do. So we’re doing a lot.
Again when it comes to what I said about the communication, we are working together with all the stakeholders, understanding the rules of all of them – the airlines, NCAA, the ticketing counter.
Most times people feel the problems get escalated because airlines do not communicate properly and on time, what do you think?
These are institutions and organisations that are made up of a lot of people; a lot of lines of management, a lot of lines of communication and so it does take leadership to be able to work with what I have termed or what we call a cascade and an escalate situation and this is what we do now at MMA2. Okay so it’s a two-way thing and it works hand in hand as leadership as the heads as the ones that are able to see the strategy of things as well as the tactical of it.
We must cascade information downwards we must allow the guys on the field the operational guys we all know it even with governments and wars there are generals and there are foot soldiers and the foot soldiers are very important. Don’t under estimate the powers that the operational guys have and at the same time so if we are not giving them information what do we want them to do?
It’s not fair if the big ‘oga’ knows that that airplane maybe it’s going to take two hours for it to get there; it’s going from maybe Asaba to Abuja, before it goes to Uyo, before it gets there, it’s not fair if you don’t tell your foot soldiers what’s going on. Now the same thing and there’s a big man he’s sitting in the office somewhere at the headquarters and the foot soldier does not tell him that master something seems to be wrong, we’re not getting the right information. That is called escalate, so the guy is sitting there in his office thinking everything is going on fine and nobody has called him to say it looks like we’re having a problem here, nobody called him.
So it is a two-way thing. You either escalate from the operational up through the tactical to be able to get to the strategy for them to be able to know what to do or you cascade from strategy through tactical down to operation. It has to happen, somebody has to make it happen that is what leadership should do. Leadership should have the humility as well as put away the pride to be able to say guys I think we have an issue what should we do about it, but it’s not really a culture we practice here.
But it happens and it’s possible and it’s getting better and better. Some of the new airlines and even some of the old airlines are changing their ways. So they quickly communicate and then at the same time when there’s an issue on ground we think there’s an issue the guys who are at the operation; field guys, the guys on the tarmac, the guys at the air side, land side, checking counter, ticketing counter, ‘oga we have a problem, the systems are not working. It looks like our slots are not going to work, it looks like this light is going to interrupt that flight.’ It’s just information and because it’s the safety and security of the passenger I propose and strongly recommend every stakeholder that has to do anything with aviation must practice that as a management tool.