Travel Agents Lament Business Lull At PH Airport

Travel agents, otherwise known as flight ticket operators, at the Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa, have lamented about low business operations in the airport. 
Some of the agents who spoke to The Tide said, several changes that were introduced by the airport management since the airport was reopened late last year had almost crippled their business.
Mr Kingsley Nnodim, one of the ticket operators, decried the total restrictions placed on them from accessing the terminal building where airlines operate from.
According to him, the nature of the business requires that travel agents have direct dealings with the airlines to enable them procure flight ticket and boarding pass for their clients. 
“You can imagine what the scenario will look like when we could no longer have direct access to the airlines as we used to. It simply means that our jobs have been taken away from us.
“I have been on this business for very many years, and people know me in this airport, including the management, but this time around, they are making things more difficult for us”, he lamented.
For another travel agent, Mr Friday Nwafor,the Covid-19 protocols, so introduced by the airport authorities coupled with increased charges on On-Duty-Card (ODC) are major hindrances to business operations in the airport. 
“We used to renew our On-Duty-Card annually with the sum of N300,000 and N500,000, but since the reopening of the airport after the Covid-19 lockdown, we were asked to pay the sum of N1million for the same ODC, to have access to the airlines at the terminal building.
“I don’t have N1million to pay for ODC now; where am l going to get it? I cannot have direct access to the airlines to get boarding pass for my customers, and it has been very tough for my job here.
“Let things be normalised, and let the airport management look into the cost of renewing the ODC, so that our business can pick up again”, he pleaded.

By Corlins Walter