The new terminal at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos, has not started flight operations, two weeks after the Federal Government inaugurated it and announced that flights could then take off and land at the new edifice.
A visit to the airport on Thursday showed that the old terminal is still very busy, with international flights landing and taking off from there and passengers being processed at the airport.
BusinessDay also observed that the new terminal was completely barricaded, and passengers who tried to access the building were directed to the old terminal to catch their flights upon arrival.
“The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) just rushed to inaugurate the new terminal because the president was coming to Lagos. There are hitches at the airside. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done around that terminal,” a source close to the ministry of aviation told BusinessDay.
“The roads and the runway have not been tiled yet. So, there is nowhere flights can even land. I don’t think the terminal will be ready any time soon because even after the runway is completed, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) will be invited for inspection.”
BusinessDay gathered that the new terminals at MMIA; Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja; Aminu Kano International Airport; Akanu Ibiam International Airport, Enugu and Port Harcourt International Airport were all funded from the China Exim bank facility to the Nigerian government.
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However, while other terminals have since been completed and put to use, the completion of Lagos terminal has been delayed as a result of design error and wrong placement of the apron (where aircraft are packed).
Upon the discovery of this error, the Federal Government ordered the demolition of several buildings around the place.
The headquarters of the Accident Investigation Bureau which had been upgraded with latest technologies and equipment to aid accident investigation was demolished alongside private hangars with investments worth N5 billion.
BusinessDay gathered that despite the demolition, the apron is not wide enough to accommodate wide-bodied aircraft such as Dream liner aircraft, Boeing 777s, 747s and Airbus A380s, which are flown by Qatar Airways, Ethiopian Airlines, British Airways and Air Peace.
Tayo Ojuri, managing partner, Aglow Aviation Support Services Limited, told BusinessDay that he was reliably informed that the arrival section of the new Lagos terminal was also not ready and there were some major errors FAAN was still trying to fix around the airport.
“I don’t know why we will commission an airport that is not ready for operations. The old terminal is gradually becoming uninhabitable as the air conditioners and the baggage handling systems have been packed up for weeks now. The new terminal would have helped a lot,” Ojuri said.
According to him, now is a good time to open the new terminal for operations because of summer rush, as most airlines are already fully booked for summer following the lift of travel bans in various countries.
John Ojikutu, aviation security consultant and secretary general of the Aviation Safety Round Table Initiative, told BusinessDay that the terminal apron could not accommodate more than four aircraft at a time, despite having six boarding gates.
“Which airlines among the foreign and local would be allocated the space in the new terminal and would not create disaffection among the others? I am in agreement with those who think the national carrier, if well established for regional, continental and intercontinental flights, should operate only from the new terminal,” Ojikutu said.
According to him, the old terminal is not fully utilised 24 hours daily even with the number of flights operating into it.
“There are lull periods between the morning flights and evening flights which are not utilised. If the airport is to be opened, it must be opened for the national interests starting with the national carrier needs,” he said.
Efforts to reach Faithful Hope-Ivbaze, acting general manager, corporate affairs at FAAN, through messages and calls, were unsuccessful as her line was unreachable.
