Assessment of Airline passenger service quality in Nigeria

Air transport has provided a lot of benefits to the economic development of any nation and has enabled stronger political ties. The deregulation of the aviation sector has led to increasing number of private operators over the years and as the passenger traffic handled by the aviation sector increase airlines are faced with a lot of challenges resulting in service defection. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to assess the airline Passenger service quality in Nigeria. The specific objective of this study was to determine the factors affecting choice of airline service, to assess how frequently passengers use an airline for their air travel, to examine the aspect of the service customers are not satisfied with and to assess the Service Quality for both domestic and international flight service. Using Younas et. al formula a total of 384 questionnaires were administered at the chosen airports (i.e., Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Nnamdi Kanu International Airport and Aminu Kano International Airport) using stratified random sampling techniques and needs assessment to select five airlines (i.e., Air Peace, Aero Contractor, Arik Air, Air Max and Medview Air) out of nine airlines providing passenger service in Nigeria. The information gathered were analysed using descriptive statistic such as mean, frequency, standard deviation and the hypothesis were tested using Pearson Correlation. The outcome of this study reveals that airlines Security (M= 4.6889, Std= 0.50963), airline Safety (M= 4.6444, Std= 0.52402), flight cancellation & delay (M= 4.62963, Std = 0.581509), in flight Technological skills (M=4.6074, Std= 0.59235), staff’s knowledge (M= 4.5852, Std= 0.64393) and arrival & departure time (M= 4.5778, Std = 0.99698) are more important to air passengers and these factors are significant in their choice of airline service.  The study also reveals that the overall service quality for domestic flight service in Nigeria is generally poor with service quality score as low as -11.343 indicates that the service offered by the airlines is very bad. Although, the domestic service varied from the international service and the study point that the overall service quality for international flight in Nigeria is generally good with a service quality score of 12.809 implies that the service is an excellent service. In addition, the overall service quality of service offered by the airlines (i.e., Air peace, Arik, Med view, Air max and Aero contractors) are extremely bad service with SQ score as low as (-1.16). Similarly, the study reveals that customers are satisfied with service Tangibility (i.e., 148 responses), Empathy (i.e., 142 responses), Assurance (i.e., 193 responses) and are dissatisfied with the Reliability (i.e., 133 responses) and Responsiveness (i.e.,121 responses). Therefore, on average one hundred and forty-seven respondents (i.e., 55%) indicate that they are satisfied with the overall service attributes.  moreover, the hypothesis tested reveals that there is no statistically significant relationship between service quality and customer’s satisfaction toward tangibility, reliability, empathy and responsiveness dimensions. However, the result of the study shows that there is a significant relationship between service quality and customers satisfaction towards assurance attributes. The author further recommended among others that domestic flights should be operated on schedules in a situation where the load factor is less than 75% then the air carrier can have multiple flight legs at the same time offering low fare price. Also, airlines can acquire aircraft with less passenger capacity like CJR 550 or ERJ-145 for domestic flight services. Also, Airlines should work closely with the FAAN in order to monitor the handling companies and ban irregular activities with cart pushers at the front of the flight wings. The manner in which luggage’s’ are handle in Nigeria airports can lead to loss of customers’ luggage’s’ or damages of the luggage’s’. Also, improper luggage’s’ handling can only occur with the staffs of the handling companies and the Aviation security because they are the two parties whom have access to luggage’s’ before and after flight therefore they need to be seriously monitored.