Director-general and chief executive officer of Consumes Protection Council (CPC), Babatunde Irukera has blamed airlines for not having the appropriate mechanisms for passengers to call in and have complaints resolved.
Irukera who made this known recently at the 22nd Annual Seminar organized by the League of Airports and Aviation Correspondents (LAAC) held r in Lagos noted that regardless of all these challenges airlines are facing, it is important the carriers measure their responsiveness and sensitivity indexes with respect to their consumers.
In a chat with journalists after delivering a paper at the seminar, titled: “Boosting Confidence and Increasing Traffic in Aviation-A Passenger Perspective” the CPC DG said “what I seem to be hearing from a lot of the airlines is that there are challenges on how they do their work, infrastructural challenges, regulatory bottlenecks. But what was clear to me and what I conveyed to them is, regardless of all these challenges, I think that airlines have to measure their responsiveness and sensitivity indexes with respect to their consumers. One thing is that they don’t even have the appropriate mechanism for people to call in and have complaints resolves”.
“As a matter of fact about a week ago, I sat in a meeting with NCAA and airlines operators and obviously the meeting was a collaborative meeting on how to address consumer issues in the industry. And what I seem to be hearing from a lot of the airlines, were there are challenges on how they do their work, infrastructural challenges, regulatory bottlenecks”.
He said that the consumer issues are primarily soft infrastructure issues. He equally added that airport and the airside or the terminal side experiences are vital to consumer experiences because if you have the best airports but there poor responsiveness, then consumers will still be displeased.
Advising the airlines on customers services, Irukera said that “airline industry is one place where you can easily satisfy consumers. Nobody wants to fly when it is unsafe to fly, so if there is a delay for a legitimate safety reasons, consumers will actually appreciate that”.
“ But what needs to happen is that first those delays have to be for legitimate reasons and your responsiveness and sensitivity to the issues must be such that you are upfront, you provide the information and then you provide options or find a way to mitigate whatever the inconveniences that consumers will be experiencing”, he added.
He said working with the sector regulator is going to be important for CPC to truly provide the kind of 360 degree protection that is required, stressing that the sector regulator has agreed to work with them.
On Value Added Tax (VAT) waiver for airlines, Irukera said that from the consumer stand point, it means it is going to translate to a better experience for consumers, fairer pricing for the consumer.
“I am all in support of it. So I don’t look at things from a tax stand point, which is more from a business stand point. But if that trickles all the way to benefit to consumers, both from a service stand point and a pricing stand point then I think it is an excellent idea.
“In the period I have been there I don’t think there has been any inconsistent comments but we have a working relationship where we collaborate, we cross refer complains and we address them from the two different legislative stand point. There are some mechanism for resolutions that exist in the consumer protection council act that don’t exist in the civil aviation act and then there are some that exist in the civil aviation act that don’t exist in the consumer protection act.
“All we ultimately try to do is to make sure that there is regulatory clarity for the airlines to understand what exactly they are confronted with and we also make sure that whichever approach we take is what brings the best benefit for the consumers”, Irukera said.
