The management of Med-View Airline has castigated Gatwick Authority in London and its ground handling agent over the cancellation of its London-Lagos and Lagos-London flights.
The management of Med-View Airline has castigated Gatwick Authority in London and its ground handling agent over the cancellation of its London-Lagos and Lagos-London flights.
The airline specifically said that the two organizations were sabotaging its flights into and outside the United Kingdom for no known reason.
A statement by the Executive Director, Business Development and Commercial, Mr. Isiaq Na-Allah, said that apart from the two bodies, some strong European organizations are also conniving against the airline in Europe.
It would be recalled that a Boeing 767 owned and operated by Med-View Airline was in 2017 blacklisted from the European airspace by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) for not airworthy.
The airline had to quickly wet-lease another B767 aircraft to the London. A source close to the airline then had told our correspondent that the major reason behind the EASA blacklist was to drive away the airline from the European space and called on the Nigerian Government to intervene, which never happened till date.
According to Na-Allah, after the departure of its flight from Lagos to London on Wednesday, January 24, 2018, the handling agent informed the management in London that it would not be providing services to its aircraft for no reason, stressing that it had already positioned the aircraft to operate out and into the UK today, Friday, 26 January.
He said that when it was informed of the unfortunate development, it immediately sought the intervention of the Gatwick Authority, which was expected to be unbiased, but the organization equally joined the handling agent in sabotaging the operations.
He added that in order to avoid an embarrassment, the management attempted to get an alternative handling agent to temporarily handle its operations, but lamented that this one also failed.
Besides, he alleged that its already check-in passengers who were scheduled to come to Lagos on this service were also denied boarding and the airline had to provide accommodations and logistics for them with the hope of settling the issue the next day and then continue with its services.
He added: “Our European partner, EAA came and intervened, but this also proved abortive. This we view strongly as unethical and draw a suspicious motive.In order to avoid more embarrassing situations, we protected these passengers on other alternative carriers to Lagos. We strongly regret this situation."
“As it became evident that our airplane will not be allowed to come and position to Lagos for our next rotation to London, we had no choice other than to cancel our London service today, Friday, 26 Jan.”
He said the management had communicated to the affected passengers and endorsed them on other carriers, stressing that some of the passengers rejected the offer and insisted on a particular carrier.
He noted that the management was working on resolving the problem.
