General Manager of British Airways, Mr. Ian Petrie, last Monday cleared the air on the lingering allegation of maltreatment of Nigerian passengers on board the airline by its crew, saying that BA holds its Nigerian customers in high esteem. Incumbent Minister of State for Aviation, Chief Femi Fani- Kayode, had accused some foreign airlines of looking down on their Nigerian passengers, a trend he warned they must stop if they want to continue doing business with the country.
But Petrie, in a chat with journalists in Lagos, noted that the Nigerian passenger is as important to the airline as their counterparts in Europe or America. He also said, that the airline was ready to investigate all cases of maltreatment of passengers brought to his attention with a view to addressing it.
He said, � We treat all people the same. Every customer is important to us. Nigerians are not treated differently from anybody else. I know these allegations keep coming up but there is no foundation on it and I have asked the minister if he can give me specific examples of where we have treated people badly or we have had bad customer service and I will investigate them.�
The minister had at a briefing in Lagos recently condemned the manner in which Virgin Atlantic and British Airways treat Nigerians both at home and abroad. Petrie, however, stressed that sometimes their level of service could drop which could amount to people thinking they were being undermined. He noted that a development like such often happen in any part of the world and should not be seen as a deliberate move by the airline to smite its customers.
He also debunked the claims that the airline deploys older aircraft on the Lagos-London routes. �There is also the perception that we put new aeroplanes in America and old planes in Nigeria. That is totally rubbish because the same aeroplane that comes to Lagos goes on to the next trip to the States or to Hong Kong. Nigeria is our market and we treat it like every other market,� he added.
Petrie, who described the increasing competition on the Lagos-London routes as a welcome development said, it would in no small measure, ginger the airline to be alive to their responsibility. �We recognize there is competition. We recognize we have to do better than the competitor to attract the passengers and we favour competition because it keeps you on your toes and competition is not something that is new to us because at Heathrow, we compete with over 200 airlines on a daily basis, considering seven or eight airlines over here, keeps me on my toes and makes me works harder,� he said.
Meanwhile, the airline used the forum to announce that the winners of the recent �shop to fly� promotion have collected their prices. The promotion, which was sponsored by BA in collaboration with other corporate organizations, had winners drawn from Lagos and Ibadan. According to the airline�s Loyalty and Relationship and Marketing Executive, West Africa, Mrs. Miatta Efe-Ogbene, the promo was initiated last year in the spirit of the yuletide, to give something back to its customers.
The winners of the promo received various gift items including cash prices, handsets phones and return tickets to London on BA.