A passenger’s airline experience

I had concluded my business in Abuja the day before and was looking forward to going back to Kano early in the morning. However, as it turned out, there was no flight except for the 6.10 pm flight. I booked it. I should have taken a cab. After waiting for about an hour, passengers were […]

I had concluded my business in Abuja the day before and was looking forward to going back to Kano early in the morning. However, as it turned out, there was no flight except for the 6.10 pm flight. I booked it. I should have taken a cab. After waiting for about an hour, passengers were informed that the flight was being delayed for about one hour. It was the last word we would hear. There we sat; waiting. Around 10.30 pm, some passengers decided to find out what the problem was. We were finally able to take off over four hours after our flight’s scheduled take-off time. For some of us who had checked in early, it was a five to seven hour wait before boarding the plane. When we arrived at Kano Airport around 12am, I realized there were other passengers at Kano Airport waiting for us to arrive and for them to board. It was really pathetic.
What prompted me to write this article I’m not sure, but I do know it has a lot to do with a group of business men or are they executives? I do not know. What I do know is that they appear to be high profile personalities. They were complaining bitterly about their experience at the airport. Each was replaying a similar episode aboard the flight, with despair and resentment. But I wasn’t resenting airline; I was resenting us. I was resenting the unfortunate fact that each and every one of the 50 or so passengers was either silently or loudly complaining about our wait but not likely to take any action whatsoever to ensure it didn’t happen again or to ensure that we were compensated for our time. Yes! Compensated!! For I attach much value for time spent by a delay that is not caused by passengers. We suffered jetlag even before we went onboard, we suffered inconveniences and discomfort, all those were damages caused.
What I so much wanted to ask the businessmen was what did any one of us ever do about what we were lamenting over? Was it their fault if they took us all for granted?
Is our time so unimportant even to us, our productivity so valueless that no significance is attached to a four-hour delay without the courtesy of communicating an excuse to the victims? What kind of a society do we live in where consumer rights are meaningless and of no significance? I mean think about what a person can actually do in four hours. That was actually why I decided to take action by doing what I know best how to- writing. I want to do something to change our culture of doing nothing about our problems. Problems we complain about yet sweep over with no action.
Costumers are the bedrock of every service provider, the customer is the King and not vice versa, because without the customer there would be no utility for the service, and there would be no business for the service provider. Unfortunately, in Nigeria, it is the other way round. In the same flight, the flight attendant brushed me off because when he offered me ‘water or juice’ I asked whether the Juice was Apple. Is that a problem actually? Can’t he politely tell me they only have orange? Must he make me feel I was the most disgusting parasite to be brushed off easily? The real fact here is that the service providers are the lords and masters and the clients are always at their ‘mercy’.  Delays in flights usually attract ‘inconvenience allowances’, at least that’s the international best practice we ought to aspire for. What was intrinsically wrong was the lack of any ‘real communication’, failure to acknowledge the value of our time, and accord importance to it; and secondly, the fact that it is a usual occurrence
In the legal profession, there is always an excuse from liability when some damage caused is categorized as falling under an unexpected disruptive event, or in Latin, ‘force majeure’. This refers to a happening beyond the control of an individual, and is actually a basis for exonerating an individual from liability. However, where the act is cause by the action or inaction of another upon whom there is a responsibility, then the issues of liability most definitely arises. But let us not talk liability now; let us talk prevention of further occurrence. Would the airline delay its flights again? Without being too pessimistic, I think the answer to that is yes! But the next question is the most important one; how do we stop this particular airline, or any other airline for that matter, from taking its passengers for granted and delaying flights without due regard to the discomfort these bring to them? How do we make them accountable for such inexcusable delays caused by inefficiency?
So if you have been on the same flight as I, or have been an unfortunate victim of flight delays at some other time, or simply want to share your ideas, even if you’ve not suffered flight delays, please help by sending your suggestions on how to address the problem of consumer protection in the aviation industry. Please let your suggestions flow…
(Just a week earlier a friend missed an important interview because she missed her flight for being late 5 minutes after the counter was closed. So the airlines stick by time when it suits them, and waste our own time when it suits them).

Ahmad wrote from Kano <[email protected]>;