Medview links stranded passengers’ plight to sabotage

• Passengers groan

Medview’s Airline passengers to London and Dubai were left stranded at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos yesterday.

Some of the passengers were scheduled to travel out of the country since Wednesday Dubai, but could not fly out as planned while the London bound passengers originally scheduled to be ferried to London at 11:30am today could also not depart the country.

Meanwhile, the airline has attributed the problem to sabotage from London Gatwick Airport.

Executive Director, Business Development Manager, Isiaq Na-Allah in a statement to the media said after the departure of, “our flight from Lagos to London on Wednesday.”

“We wish to inform our numerous passengers who were scheduled to travel on our flight in and out of London and Lagos today 26 Jan on the fact of the situation.

“We were informally informed by our handling agent that they will not be providing services to our aircraft. We immediately sought intervention of the Gatwick authority that is expected to be unbiased but joined the fray surprisingly. Not wanting to take chances, we sought for alternative handling arrangements to avert an ugly situation but this proved abortive”, he added.

He further explained that after the departure of our flight from Lagos to London on Wednesday they were informally informed by their handling agent that they will not be providing services to their aircraft.

“We immediately sought intervention of the Gatwick Authority who is expected to be unbiased but joined the fray surprisingly. Not wanting to take chances, we sought for alternative handling arrangements to avert an ugly situation but this proved abortive”.

Our passengers who were scheduled to come to Lagos on this service were therefore denied boarding and we had to provide accommodations and logistics for them with the hope that we will clear the issue the next day and then operate the service.

He further explained that Medview’s European partner, EAA came and intervened but this also proved abortive, adding that this they view strongly as unethical and draws a suspicious motive.

In order to avoid more embarrassing situations, Na-Allah disclosed that they provided the passengers on other alternative carriers to Lagos, saying, “We strongly regret this situation”.

He noted that as it became evident that their airplane will not be allowed to come and position to Lagos for its next rotation to London, the management had no choice other than to cancel their London service today, Friday Jan 26, 2018.

“This we effectively communicated to our passengers and protected them on other carriers. While some accepted the offer, some rejected insisting they want a particular carrier. We are presently working to resolve with these passengers”.

Wole Shadare