The Regional manager South South/ South East airports Mr. Felix Akinbuni who disclosed this to journalists in Portharcourt, explained that the management of the airport was moving in an uncommon way to get a business plaza, first of its kind in the country.
According to Akinbumi when completed and put into use, it will generate uncommon revenue for the authority.
He said with enormous land at the airport location was never a problem adding that it will be massive when completed
The airport manager disclosed that domestic passengers traffic has been steady adding that the domestic terminal find it difficult to take all the passengers as a result of number of operating aircraft arriving at a time
“Domestic operations has been encouraging and tremendous.
We are expecting same at the international terminal very soon”
Akinbumi noted, that a steady progress was being made at the international wing when Turkish Airline and Ethiopian airlines operated in 2019 but added that with the covid 19 in 2020 activities were brought down drastically.
He said it remained a great challenge in 2020 while it picked up a little in 2021 when restrictions on movement were lifted.
The regional manager disclosed that with the coming of Qatar airways this month and Turkish in the second quarter that the international activities will pick up again.
He disclosed that the encroachment on the airport land by the people around describing it as it challenging adding that several correspondence have been written to the headquarters while dialogue was on going
Akinbumi decried the absence of non dedicated power line to the airport but revealed that power supply to the airport was fairly stable except when there was maintenance or transmission challenges.
On the issue of security, Akinbumi said, there was a joint patrol team comprising security personnel at the airport to raid the area of unwanted elements
He said access cards of some government affects caught for extortion have been retrieved adding that AVSEC review it’s CCTV cameras regularly and those apprehended were punished after withdrawing their On Duty cards
