NCAA Urges Consumers, Stakeholders To Study Passengers Bill Of Right

The Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has advised Airline passengers and stakeholders to read and understand passengers’ rights and consumer-related issues under the NCAA regulatory provisions governing the Consumer Protection.

The Authority said with better understanding, passengers’ and stakeholders’ issues around passengers’ rights would be better understood.

The Director, Public Affairs and Consumer Protection of the authority, Mr. Michael Achimugu, disclose that in Abuja, the nation’s capital, during a press briefing with Journalist.

Achimugu advises Passengers to study the NCAA regulations to know their rights and responsibilities. “If you know your rights, you can always claim them because most of the time, the airlines won’t inform you of your benefits.” our regulations provide timelines and compensations in resolving different passenger complaints.

“We want to address the issue of time frame in resolving passenger complaints, we have noticed over the time passengers and other government agencies who forward complaints to us do not seem to understand the concept of time within the NCAA regulatory framework and aviation regulations globally.”

“Passengers assume that once they forward a complaint it should be resolved within a day or two days, while some give us a time frame within which they are expecting NCAA to resolve their complaints or issues, in this case, we have carried out a lot of awareness regarding passengers’ rights and obligations to correct these misconceptions.” He said.

He further provides the following guidelines below for resolution of different series of complaints:

“For delayed luggage passengers are entitled to a first needs payment of N10,000 for domestic flights and USD170 for international flights while the baggage is being searched for. However, the USD170 will only apply if the airlines fail to provide their conditions for baggage delays.”

He further explained that the airline has up to seven days to search for the delayed baggage for domestic flights and twenty one days for international flights.

“If passenger baggage is confirmed missing, the liability limit is $1,000 for local airlines. However, “passengers’’ can get additional compensation if they declare their valuables whilst checking in their baggage.

For international passengers, it is $1,288 Special Drawing Rights (SDR), which you can access in currency and on ticket refunds, “refunds shall be made immediately if paid with cash or within fourteen days if it’s by bank transfer.

“Refunds via means other than cash must be made within fourteen days However, some delay might be experienced from submission of required documents passenger”

According to him, airlines risk up to five million naira fine for failure to resolve refund issues within the regulatory stipulated time. He also revealed there is a punishment between One million to Ten million naira for unruly behavior, adding that the passenger also risks a jail term of between six months to one year.

“We are warning passengers against false claims of missing items, on several occasions passengers lie of missing items in their luggage, but after we found them or viewed the CCTV camera we noticed that what they mentioned missing is false, we need to be honest and avoid any false claims that might damage someone’s reputation.” Achimugu said.

Olusola Akintonde