The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has explained that its decision to relocate airlines to a newly built terminal at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, was based on the fact that the system may crash.
Managing Director, FAAN, Captain Rabiu Yadudu, who addressed concerns that some foreign airlines had refused to relocate to the terminal, said there is nowhere in the world that relocation of airlines to a new airport terminal takes place at once.
He, therefore, maintained that the agency might be forced to relocate its operations to the place at the appropriate time.
Yadudu’s words: “It is unfortunate that some of them (foreign airlines) said they will not move, but we are not ready to compel them to move. We’ll’ just keep quiet. You cannot be a FAAN client and dictate to us. When the time comes, they must all move. Those that refuse to move want to paint us in a bad light that we don’t’ have a good terminal, which is not true.
“The terminal is open. When you commission a new terminal, you have to do an operational transfer before you can move. We decided to start moving in phases. We didn’t’ want everyone to move at the same time. If you remember, when Terminal 5 opened in London, it took others about six months because of some teething challenges. It is only here that people complain. There is nowhere in the world that you have a perfect system. No airport operates in isolation from its environment. The aviation industry keeps evolving when the challenges happen and are tackled immediately.
“The relocation is in phases. No airport system will say you want to relocate to a new terminal, and if you want to remove everybody, you will crash. So, we sent two airlines, and other ones will follow. I told them to move the airlines that operate morning and afternoon flights so that we will decongest the old terminal.”
Since President Muhammadu Buhari commissioned the project in March 2022, foreign carriers, including British Airways, Emirates Airlines, Air France, KLM, and Lufthansa, are yet to relocate their operations to the terminal.
