Chinedu Eze
Airline operators have sought the understanding of air travellers over the incessant flight cancellations and delays, saying that there are many factors that contribute to hiccups in fight operations beyond their control.
Recently restive passengers, frustrated by flight cancellations and delays, have become physically violent in some occasions by ventilating their rage on airline ground officials at airports.
But airline operators explainedthat passengers need to be sensitised to understand the circumstances under which flights could be delayed or cancelled and pointed out that some of these factors are beyond the control of the airlines.
The operators blamed some of the recent flight delays on inclement weather, VIP movement and infrastructural limitations, noting that the safety of passengers is the first consideration in airline operation.
Vice-President of the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), Mr. Allen Onyema, told newsmen during the League of Airports and Aviation Correspondents (LAAC) conference in Lagos that “no airline worth its salt” would deliberately inconvenience its passengers by delaying or cancelling flights.
He also reiterated that due to the COVID-19 lockdown globally, the aircraft of most of the operators are stuck at maintenance hangars abroad, remarking that new airlines might not experience same because their planes are not yet due for C-checks.
“We are in a rainy season when there is thunderstorm airlines may delay flights. You may sit in Lagos and you are going to Abuja and you call your friend. When you tell them weather is not good, they might call their relations in Abuja, they would tell them everywhere is clear but they don’t understand that en-route weather condition also matters.
“And once you delay because of any reason, it affects the entire day. Every aircraft every day is planned to go to certain routes. Once anything happens on one of those planned routes, it would affect the others. It is like that all over the world.
“The other day a flight was going to Calabar, getting to Calabar, it couldn’t land. If that flight had landed in Calabar, they would have gone from Calabar to Abuja, from Abuja, they would go back to Calabar and back to Lagos.
“But the one that left Lagos to Calabar couldn’t land because of adverse weather. So they had to hover and after sometimes they turned back and landed in Port Harcourt. Over two hours delay occurred. It means that the passengers in Calabar waiting to go to Abuja would be delayed, those in Abuja waiting to go back to Calabar would be delayed. Those of them in Calabar waiting to come to Lagos would be delayed. Any other route that was planned with that aircraft that day would experience delay. So this is one of the things that cause delay. It is all over the world,” Onyema explained.
Speaking in the same vein, the Managing Director of the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NIMET), Prof. Mansur Matazu, said the South-West states are currently experiencing August anomalous weather, which is characterized by less rainfall but general cloudiness.
He stressed the need for airlines to work more with the agency in the area of getting accurate weather information.
“The accuracy of our forecast is more than 90 percent and it is our duty to provide this forecast at the airport level. We provide terminal aerodrome forecast. We are present in all the 24 airports and also all the four international airports because we have independent forecasting office where we do this.
“The beginning of the rainy season in the South is associated with thunderstorm and stormy weather which we have passed. What we have now in the Southwest, like Lagos and other states, are anomalous August weather. We are beginning to see this since last week in July. So there is a lot of window of less rainfall activity but it will remain cloudy,” the NIMET Director General added.
