The Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited (BASL), operators of the Murtala Muhammed Airport Terminal Two (MMA2), has up its game at handling the inflow of traffic especially in this season of yuletide, saying the terminal is not just prepared for the traffic but excited about it.
Chief Operating Officer (COO), BASL, Mrs. Tosan Duncan-Odukoya, in an interview with Justnet News revealed that the company had gone ahead since August to prepare for the season through the upgrade of its facilities and engagement with stakeholders.
Odukoya said her team loves the inflow of the travelling public because it gives it the opportunity to express appreciation to the passengers for their patronage.
According to her, the escalators, baggage control systems, and all other facilities were beefed up and made ready to accommodate the traffic.
In addition to that, she said BASL at its 16th anniversary in August found the need to express the first stage of adulthood in handling its responsibility and to this end it set up a task force called ‘PPPP’ – Peak Period Preparatory Plan, coupled with a mini stakeholders meeting with the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the airlines and the ground handlers.
The COO said the PPPP involved the ordering of spare parts from abroad to enhance the terminal’s world class facility and improvement on its technology to make passenger flow faster and seamless.
The training communication according to her, was also improved upon, adding that BASL was working on a de-escalation system of crowd control involving the aviation security personnel as well as the consumer protection unit of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), because NCAA is actually responsible for the passenger.
She said: “So we have prepared; 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 the ‘aleju’ because 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 stuff. 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. 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’re doing.
“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 MMA 2, it is important that we bring to bear; a lot of our spare parts, they are, as we call it over here, dollarised.
“They come from far to run the roller systems, that run the x-ray machines, to run the shutter systems that run the aerial 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 about 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 (NCAA) – the consumer protection unit division 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, we called it a mini summit. We called them in, they came with the airlines, and 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 for over this time because we’ve been doing it yearly but this year is special. 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.