Yemisi Izuora
The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), called on the public and all aviation stakeholders to disregard the misguided attempt to discredit statistical data emanating from the Authority, insisting it stands by its statistics.
The agency maintains that the figures are verifiable and are harmonised by all relevant aviation parastatals, government agencies and handling companies.
“It is therefore important for the public to be aware that there is a disparity between NCAA’s data collection basis and FAAN’s.
In addition, 5 per cent Ticket Sales Charge (TSC) is not based on the total tickets sold but only on flown tickets.
On the other hand, FAAN computes its Passenger Service Charge (PSC) on all categories of passengers flying through the airport.
Furthermore, 5 per cent TSC applies to all tickets originating from Nigeria with the exclusion of Diplomats, Tickets sold offshore, infants tickets and staff tickets. These are all classified as non-taxable tickets.
It said that tickets sold by National Association of Nigeria Travel Agencies (NANTA) and Airlines do not translate to taxable tickets until it is utilised by the passenger” it said in a statement.
The Authority also denied that there is no consultant(s) commissioned to collect its revenue on its behalf as payments have since been automated while the processing and data analysis for both international and domestic airlines are handled by NCAA staff.
The Automation process is a transparent system that obtains billable data directly from the reservation system of the airlines.
On the international route, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) is responsible for billing and collection of revenue which is remitted into NCAA TSA account.
This is the global practice as charged by member states (airlines) to ensure coherent fare structure to prevent exploitative and monopolistic tendencies of the airlines.
The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) assured Nigerians that its statistical data undergoes due diligence and the integrity can be ascertained before it is published.