By Chinelo Obogo
The first ever device that enhances on-time performance, minimises delay and increases peed of boarding has been launched into Nigeria’s aviation market.
This is coming as Nigeria’s oldest airline, Aero Contractors, released Pro-Ranger, a product which would reduce boarding time by 50 percent into the domestic market at a press conference in Lagos on Monday.
The Head Commercial, Chika Ubendu, and the Head, Ground Operations of the airline, Peter Omata, said the airline has 31 of such devices which would be deployed to all its routes and that members of staff have been trained to effectively operate them.
Speaking on the new product, Mr. Omata said, the Pro-Ranger expedites boarding procedures and on-time performance which would cut down incidents of delays.
He said the device also allows the airline to capture passenger data from the checking point at the boarding gate in an on time manner and aggregate information.
He said the device will detect passengers with boarding passes at the boarding gate, thereby enabling them appropriately profile passengers and also to produce a comprehensive manifest.
“In a bid to reposition Aero Contractors, we have thought it wise as one of the leading airlines in Nigeria to launch one of the product that would enhance our mode of operations as you are all aware, one of the cardinal things in aviation is passenger facilitation. We acquired the mobile Pro-Ranger, a device that aids passenger facilitation seamless so that passengers can enjoy their stay when travelling with aero contractors. As you all know manifest is a key part of aviation, one of those things required, the total number of passengers onboard must tally with what we have on the document checked in. The check-in can be done remotely and at any part of the airport where it is used and passengers would not need to stand at the counters, especially people without baggage and check them in.
“It makes it faster and by doing that you are making facilitation seamless for the travelling public. We have started using the product, we have commenced the usage, it is user-friendly and we would look at other products that would enhanced the success of aero contractors,” he said.
The Head Commercial, Aero Contractors, Chika Ubendu said, the company has also launched its new schedule in line with passengers demands and comfort.
According to her, its Asaba flight time has been moved from 4pm to 9am and same would be applied to other routes.
“We listened to the customers who said, they prefer morning flights, so we had to tweak our schedule to suit that. We may not necessarily have more frequencies but what we want to achieve is that, whatever we have is what customers would be comfortable with, our interest is the customers interest.”
“At Aero contractors, passenger comfort is priority to us and what we have done is to look at the schedule we are running vis-a-vis the demands of the passengers so we try to tweak our schedule a bit so that passengers would be more comfortable flying us,” she said.
Currently, Aero Contractors routes are Lagos, Abuja, Calabar, Benin, Asaba, Yola, Kano and Sokoto and operated using the Dash-8, Q400 and Boeing aircraft.