Arik suspends lucrative London, Jo’burg routes
*Re-aligns operations
Arik Air has suspended flight operations to London and Johannesburg, two prime international routes.
The airline said in a statement made available to Woleshadare.net said the idea was to enable them find permanent solution facing their passengers as it would enable us to carry out a thorough assessment of the situation.
It said the strategic business decision was meant to realign their operations and refocus on satisfying their domestic and West Africa and other international passengers.
The management said it would also present Arik with excellent opportunity to engage and discuss with creditors who have become restive since the intervention and have also understandably exhausted their patience due to non-payment of accumulated debt and non-performance on services and contracts
Consequent upon this, arrangements are being made to refund all international passengers of the airline that are affected by this decision.
“To our international creditors, Arik is most grateful for your patience and understanding. We reassure them that all pending issues with the airline will be duly addressed as a matter of priority as we plan to engage them in this regard”.
The international route is very critical for the strategic turn around, growth strategy and stability of the airline. Therefore we intend to revisit the routes immediately we address all the problems inherited, which is affecting and creating more dissatisfied passenger base.”
“We appeal to all passengers to kindly bear with us as the decision is to ensure that the airline adheres strictly to international aviation best practices.”
The airline was on Thursday taken over by the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON).
AMCON said it would require over N10 billion to fix the rot before the largest local carrier could resume full and uninterrupted flight operations to its regular routes across the country and beyond.
AMCON had directed that the airline would now be managed by Roy Ilegbodu, a veteran aviation expert, under the receivership of senior lawyer Oluseye Opasanya.
The statement noted that the situation was so bad that only nine aircraft out of the 30 in the fleet of the airlines were operational.
According to the statement, 21 of them have either been grounded, gone for C-check in Europe, or facing other challenges.
“As if these problems are not enough, the airline does not have money to procure aviation fuel for the nine operational aircrafts because no dealer wants to sell aviation fuel to Arik if it is not on cash-and-carry basis.
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