Arik Air’s United
States and South Africa-bound passengers, who were stranded due to bad weather
condition, on Wednesday disrupted the airline’s services at the
international
wing of the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos.
The airline’s
members of staff at a point abandoned their duty posts as the passengers became
uncontrollable.
Arik, like other
domestic airlines, has been unable to fly its international passengers to their
destinations since Tuesday, December 27, thereby creating a backlog.
The development is
coming barely a day after the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority sanctioned the
airline for violating passengers’ rights and contravening the provisions of the
Nigerian Civil Aviation Regulations.
It was gathered that
since Monday, Arik Air had not been able to operate flights to London, New York
in the United States and Johannesburg in South Africa.
Passengers lamented
that despite the backlog and the inability of the airline’s flights to depart
for these destinations, Arik’s officials at the international terminal sold
tickets to unsuspecting passengers.
As of Wednesday
afternoon, the airline had not airlifted its London-bound passengers, while its
Johannesburg passengers were still waiting.
In a reaction,
Arik’s spokesperson, Adebanji Ola, said the airline had ferried an aircraft
back from the John F. Kennedy Airport to fly its Lagos-New York passengers.
He said that due to
the damage to its Boeing A330-200 aircraft by a ground-handling company at the
JFK airport a few days ago, the airline had to charter a B767-300ER aircraft
from a European charter operator to minimise the disruption and inconvenience
to booked passengers on its Lagos-New York service.
He said, “This
arrangement was put in place to cover for the period until the return to
service of our A330-200 aircraft on December 28, 2016.
“The Lagos-New York
flight, which was scheduled to be operated by the charter company and depart
Lagos on Tuesday, December 27, 2016 at 11:00am, could not operate due to the
closure of the airspace for several hours due to bad weather. Despite the
airline’s repeated appeals to the charter operator to operate the next fight,
they insisted on positioning their crew and aircraft back to Europe on
Wednesday, December 28, 2016.”
He said Arik
immediately commenced the ferry back of its A330-200 aircraft from New York to
Lagos on Wednesday, and that the aircraft was expected to arrive Lagos today
(Thursday).
“Passengers
originally booked on Arik Air’s flight W3 107 on Tuesday, December 27, 2016
from Lagos to New York JFK will now be accommodated to travel on Thursday, December
29, 2016 at 06:00am,” Ola added
Punch
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