Chairman, Board of Trustees of the Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria, FTAN, Alhaji Aminu Agoha has called for the establishment of an airline clearing house in Nigeria’s aviation sector to address the persistent crisis of flight delays and cancellations.
Agoha made the call after a panel session at the Aviation Day Conference of the 22nd Akwaaba African Travel Market in Lagos, themed “Flight Delays and Cancellations, the Rules and Rights of Passengers: The Airlines perspective.”
He said airlines must be innovative in resolving the age-long problem which, according to him, has caused huge economic losses and untold pain to passengers.
While acknowledging that flight delays occur globally, Agoha said airlines in other climes have adopted a system that allows a passenger holding a ticket of Airline A to fly on Airline B when Airline A is unable to operate, without putting pressure on the passenger.
Citing personal experience, Agoha said he once bought a British Airways ticket to a European destination but was flown by another airline using the same British Airways ticket after the scheduled aircraft developed a technical fault.
“The clearing house will enable airlines to reconcile their ticket sales difference, and relieve the passenger of the fear of cancellation,” he said.
Agoha’s proposal mirrors the long-standing International Air Transport Association, IATA, framework for interline and clearing house operations.
Under IATA’s General Conditions of Carriage, Article X, if a carrier cancels or delays a flight, it shall either carry the passenger on another of its scheduled services, or “reroute the passenger to the destination indicated on the ticket… by its own scheduled services or the scheduled services of another carrier”.
The global system is supported by IATA’s Interline Agreements, which allow baggage to be transferred and passengers to be rebooked when they miss connections due to delays, and by the IATA Clearing House and Billing and Settlement Plan that handles prorate calculations and settlement mechanisms for tickets involving multiple airlines.
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IATA notes that one of the key benefits of interline is protection when things go wrong, as “when passengers miss the connecting flight because the previous flight was delayed, the next airline will normally rebook them”.
The call comes as the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, is enforcing Part 19 of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Regulations. The regulation mandates airlines to explain the reason for a delay within 30 minutes of scheduled departure, provide refreshments and communication after about two hours, and provide hotel accommodation and transport for overnight delays.
Agoha argued that domesticating the IATA interline model through a Nigerian airline clearing house would complement NCAA’s passenger rights regime by ensuring travellers are not stranded when their booked airline fails to operate.
