Abstract:
Passengers’ expectations play an important role in their satisfaction and the satisfaction gotten from a service can be a measure of the service quality. Quality of service is a function of the provision of infrastructural facilities, their operations and maintenance. In this study, the service quality and infrastructural facilities in Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos, Nigeria were assessed. The study involved the use of primary and secondary data. Using Taro Yamane formula to generate the sample size, 400 copies of questionnaire was administered via systematic random sampling technique to the international and domestic passengers at the airport while secondary data on passengers’ traffic (from 1999-2016) was gotten from the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN). Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23 was used for the data analysis which involved descriptive statistics, factor analysis, trend analysis, one-way ANOVA and independent sample t-test while Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) was also performed. The findings of this study are that aviation operation in Nigeria had been more of in-bound (domestic) movement based on the flight statistics analyzed. Although, there was an upsurge in the passengers’ travel frequency between 2013-2015 yet a downturn had been experienced in the last 12 months due to the nation’s economic challenges and currency exchange rate. It was further observed that the state of the infrastructural facilities in the airport was generally on the average thereby impeding effective and efficient service quality. Using Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) to determine which service areas the management should pay particular attention to in order to act and improve service quality and the satisfaction of passengers using the airport, it was noted that service attributes such as; speed of baggage delivery service, flight information screens, comfort of waiting and phone/internet/IT facilities, were of high importance to passengers using the airport but these services were performing poorly thus, it is in this areas that major improvement is required in order to boost customers’ satisfaction. Hence, the quality of service and infrastructural facilities decay in the airport significantly related to the volume of passengers’ throughput.
