Afrigather Plenty of passengers have expressed their frustration over what they skilled on the Murtala Muhammed Worldwide Airport (MMIA) in Lagos.
Crowded walkways, inadequate safety gates that sluggish passenger actions, unfriendly immigration officers, lengthy queues round strategic areas of the airports, and bathrooms with offensive odour have been recognized as a few of the elements that discourage journey and passenger facilitation.
These rising issues are coming to the fore once more at a time when some Nigerians exterior the nation are travelling again to take part within the normal elections, scheduled to begin on Saturday.
A passenger with the Twitter deal with @markessien narrated his expertise on the MMIA.
The tweep described the airport as in all probability one of many worst run and worst designed.
In line with the tweet, passengers must drop off on a street that’s one street away from the airport and there’s no walkway to get to the airport, as an alternative passengers must stroll again down the identical street, making an attempt to keep away from different automobiles which might be making an attempt to drop off different folks.
The tweep stated: “There are two safety gates for each single passenger. The place they scan baggage for no cause I can deduce, as a result of they don’t scan your physique. You wait about one hour. The complete queue is on the first entrance, as a result of it’s not apparent there’s a second entrance behind.
“There are some males who linger round and let you know they may take you to a quicker method in alternate for a tip. When you agree, they simply take you to the second entrance. As soon as in, there isn’t a option to know the queue to your aircraft. All queues merge into one another.
“Arriving is chaos. You get to a well being test, they usually offer you an A4 type to fill. There is no such thing as a area to fill it! You stand on the head of the queue, filling it whereas others look forward to you. In the meantime, one other type was given within the aircraft to foreigners solely.”
He described the automobile park as “horrible”. “It might probably take as much as an hour to get out because of the horrible design and plenty of individuals are shouting. It takes nearly 20 minutes to pay, and by the point you’re out, the ticket has expired,” he stated.
Different tweeps additionally responded to the tweet, lamenting the disagreeable scenario on the Lagos airport.
Hanson Nnadi, with the Twitter deal with @HansonNnadi, stated: “You forgot to say the air conditioners don’t work in the complete departure part.”
Chidubem, one other passenger with the Twitter deal with @Dum_Dum, stated: “When you arrive there, you turn out to be depressed, after which you’ll begin eager about airports you handed via to get there.”
“All these guys lingering round clearly have the inducement to ensure there are not any indicators in anyway. There’s NO area wherever. Safety can also be bribed to permit people who find themselves not officers in. Upkeep is zero,” MisterDavid, with the deal with @itsmisterdavid stated.
John Ojikutu, a member of Aviation Spherical Desk and chief govt of Centurion Securities, instructed BusinessDay: “There are not any clear plans for crowd management on the entry and exit gates of the passenger terminals. FAAN hasn’t come out to say any plan on spacing between passengers’ flights departures and arrivals.”
In Nigeria, passengers spend an unduly very long time at safety screening factors due to inadequate variety of X-ray machines, forcing them to queue at safety screening factors, particularly at peak hours.
In lots of different international locations, it takes between 30 seconds to 2 minutes to get screened however in Nigerian airports, it takes between 5 and quarter-hour to get screened, relying on the variety of passengers ready to be checked.
Learn additionally: Outbound flights surge ahead of Nigeria’s elections
Ojikutu listed a few of the infrastructural gaps that trigger flight delays at Lagos airport to incorporate insufficient checking-in-counters, insufficient passengers screening checkpoints and screening machines or unserviceable screening machines leading to handbook screening, insufficient plane boarding gates, insufficient plane parking areas, insufficient floor dealing with gear or amenities, and absence of taxiways or enough hyperlinks from aprons to runways.
The previous dilapidated aero bridges on the Lagos airport additionally compound the troubles of airways and passengers.
With the absence of the automated bridges, airways working in Nigeria spend tens of millions of naira yearly simply to tow their plane into the aerobridge, a degree to disembark passengers after touchdown.
BusinessDay’s findings present that in lots of international locations, airways taxi their plane into the aerobridge, however in Nigeria, airways pay to taxi their plane to the bridges as a result of the aerobridges are previous and never automated to align with newer plane.
This course of has continued to trigger pointless delays to passengers who’re compelled to stay within the plane for 10 to twenty minutes for the plane to be towed after touchdown.
