Nigeria’s Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has initiated move to stop the theft of its revenue through the automation of collection of Passenger Service Charge (PSC) at all the airports across the country. A memo to this effect dated March 15, 2018 with the reference number: FAAN/HQ/1200/RS/1/Vol.1 has been exclusively obtained by Sahara Reporters.
Nigeria’s Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has initiated move to stop the theft of its revenue through the automation of collection of Passenger Service Charge (PSC) at all the airports across the country.
A memo to this effect dated March 15, 2018 with the reference number: FAAN/HQ/1200/RS/1/Vol.1 has been exclusively obtained by Sahara Reporters.
The memo, which was signed by the Deputy General Manager, Retail, Olamide Agbaje, on behalf of the General Manager, Commercial, was copied to managers of in Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kano, Enugu, Benin, Owerri and Kaduna airports.
Also copied were managers of Calabar, Yola, Ilorin, Jos, Maiduguri, Ibadan, Sokoto, Akure, Katsina, Minna, Makurdi and Zaria airports.
FAAN, through the airlines, collects N1000 from each passenger going on local flight and $50 on passengers flying from any of its airports to international and regional destinations.
It was emphasized in the memo seen by Sahara Reporters that the management took the step to automate revenue collection due to the directive of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) that check-in procedures at the airports, operations and finances should be streamlined in order to improve the facilitation of passengers.
FAAN said it earned N23bn from PSC in 2017. The charges were collected manually, but players in the sector believe that the Authority will earn more revenue if leakages are blocked through automation.
Indeed, our correspondent gathered that officials of FAAN, especially, those in the Commercial Department, regularly connive with the officials of the airlines to under remit funds collected from passengers to FAAN for their own personal gains.
The memo seen by this website indicated that a test run to eliminate the hitches that may accompany the introduction of automation will commence on Monday, 19, 2018, but as at the time of filing this report, it was not clear of the automation had commenced.
The memo read in part: “Sequel to the directive by PEBEC on the implementation of automation of passenger service charge collection at our local airports, a meeting was held with the airlines’ representatives on 13th March, 2018 where the details of the implementation were discussed.
“Therefore, all the airport managers and the head of commercials are expected to do the following: A. Sell PSC tickets to airlines upfront (pre+paid), B. Collect load sheet of any departing aircraft after the departure from the airlines, C. Reconcile the PSC ticket collected with the figures on the load sheet, D. Collect the back from the airlines, the PSC tickets for the number of passengers on the load sheet, E. The audit, account, security and commercial departments should jointly make sure that the PSC tickets are destroyed immediately to avoid recycling after collecting same from the airline.”
The General Manager, Corporate Communications, FAAN, Mrs. Henrietta Yakubu told our correspondent in Lagos that the essence of the automation was to stop the bottlenecks associated with manual collection with the airlines.
She said: “As part of efforts aimed at easing passenger facilitation at the nation’s airports, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria has automated the collection of Passenger Service Charge at her local airports.
"With this development, the use of the Passenger Service Charge sticker at the departure gate was discontinued with effect from Monday 19th March, 2018. Henceforth, departing passengers who have checked-in prior to arrival at the airport can proceed directly to the boarding gates."
Just recently, revenue generated from parking fees at the General Aviation Terminal (GAT) of the Murtala Muhammed Airport (MMA), Lagos quadrupled after the automation of the collection process
Investigations by our correspondent had revealed that before the automation exercise, which commenced on January 8, 2018, the Authority was earning between N120,000 and N160,000 daily from the park.
But, investigations revealed that the least that had been earned from the car park daily was N480,200 since the process was automated.
A report made available to our correspondent revealed that earlier in the month of March, the agency earned about N698, 000 in a day from the car park. In the last one month, FAAN had earned about N26.1m from the singular car park, apart from other revenues earned from other car parks at the Lagos Airport.
