‘Last Flight to Abuja’ is a 2012 movie starring Omotola Jalade Ekeinde, Jim Iyke and Jide Kosoko, among others. It was produced and directed by my good friend and schoolmate, Obi Emelonye. The movie is about a certain Flamingo Airways flight, which left Lagos for Abuja on a smooth note. Midway into the flight, disaster set in, putting passengers in a frantic mode and forcing the plane to have an emergency landing with devastating consequences.
My experience with Arik Airline’s last flight to Abuja, last Monday, December 6, 2021, may not have ended with devastating consequences. But it was enough to create midair-like turbulence inside me.
It so happened that my flight was supposed to take off by 2.40pm on that fateful Monday. Then, about 2.52pm on Sunday, December 5, I got a message from Arik rescheduling the flight to 6.40pm “due to operational reasons.” I hailed the airline for at least sending a message ahead of time. Some others may not bother to inform you at all. Again, at 6.56am that fateful Monday, I got another message shifting the flight to 9.10pm. Also, it was due to operational reasons. I had no problem with this. After all, I reasoned, the airline gave me adequate information on time.
Anticipating the usual Lagos traffic, I left my house for the airport as early as 5pm. Humming the song, “Jingle bells, jingle bells, Jingle all the way,” I got to the airport a few minutes past 6pm and headed straight for Arik’s check-in counter. When my boarding pass was printed, the flight time I saw confused me. I put on my eye glasses to be sure. And behold, it was 11.50pm. I screamed.
One man who had the same predicament with me angrily threw his boarding pass at an official at the check-in counter.
“I am not travelling again,” the man shouted as he stormed out of the place. He came back a few minutes after and charged at the female Arik official: “I told you I am not going again and you are sitting there doing nothing!” The lady replied: “Oga, you have not told me what you want. You just threw your boarding pass at me and left. What do you want?”
At that stage, I left and entered the departure hall to while away time. I was pressing my phone and watching the prank one woman was playing with her baby. The baby would slip out of the mother’s grip and crawl to nowhere in particular. The slippery tiles would make her fall each time she tried to run away from the mother. Occasionally, I got up to stretch my legs. When I went to ease myself, I encountered this particular cleaner who was on standby with a mechanical smile to assist me with liquid soap and tissue paper to clean my hands. The hand driers were not working. He was obviously expecting some tips. I don’t blame him because his salary may not be up to the price of a bag of rice.
The decrepit state of our airports, especially the public convenience in the departure halls, is a story for another day. I was counting time, waiting for 11.50pm. That time came, but no announcement, no boarding! Some minutes past midnight, the announcer came up again: Due to the late arrival of the operating aircraft from Port Harcourt, Arik flight W3 726 to Abuja will be delayed for another 30 minutes. The only thing we could do at that moment was to murmur.
About 1am the following day, Tuesday, we started boarding. That was an aircraft earlier billed to leave Lagos at 2.40pm on Monday. We landed in Abuja at about 2.35am. By the time I got an airport taxi that took me to my hotel, it was 3am. On the road, I saw no soul, no security, and no vehicle. Abuja was a ghost town. If the driver had decided to kidnap me that night, it would have been very easy because nobody could have come to my rescue. At this point, my Jingle Bells song had turned to “Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee…” I checked into my hotel room at 4am.
My return flight to Lagos on Thursday, December 9, 2021, was no less eventful. My flight was to be 6.55pm. I was at the airport before 5pm. I checked in and waited. About 7pm, it was announced that the flight had been rescheduled for another one hour, 30 minutes. People were complaining. But I didn’t bother because I have become a veteran of rescheduled and cancelled flights. To cut the story short, we didn’t take off until about 11pm and landed in Lagos about midnight. No apologies, no light refreshments. I got to my house some minutes past 1am the next day.
I envied Max Airline passengers who were called from time to time to come and take some light refreshments. I expected an apology from Arik when we were on board. But all a female flight attendant could tell a few of us who wondered why they were late was, “It wasn’t our fault.” Whose fault, we asked. “Is it not your President? He was in Lagos and they disrupted our flight schedules.”
Hmmm! A fellow passenger who was sitting beside me at the airport in Abuja told me a story of what happened to Azman Air recently over flight cancellation. The airline reportedly kept shifting flight time until it cancelled the flight late night. Female passengers led the protest against the airline. They were said to have blocked the boarding gate, forcing the management of Azman Air to take them to Bolingo Hotel, Abuja where they passed the night.
As my co-passenger was narrating this story, I recalled some of my past experiences with local airlines. In May this year, I booked Max Airline from Lagos to Kano. I was to attend the Nigerian Guild of Editors’ conference then. My flight was for 8.25pm on Sunday, May 30. But midway into my journey to the airport, I got a text message from the airline notifying me that my flight was cancelled due to operational reasons. I went back home and booked Aero Contractor’s first flight to Kano the following day.
Anything can make an airline to reschedule or even cancel a flight. That is understandable. But the difference between our local airlines and the foreign ones is that, most times, our airlines don’t bother to apologise or compensate for the delays and poor service.
Foreign airlines are different. I recall an incident I had with KLM in July 2005. I was on my way to Lagos from Britain via Amsterdam. We got to the Lagos airspace about 5.30pm but could not land because a cargo aircraft had crash-landed and blocked the only functional runway then. After hovering in the air for over 30 minutes, we found ourselves at Kotoka International Airport in Accra. At midnight, we left Accra for Lagos. But again we were not allowed to land. Other foreign airlines like Lufthansa, South Africa Airways and British Airways had a similar problem.
We eventually landed in Abuja about 4am, went through immigration formalities and went straight to the luxury bus waiting to take us to Sheraton Hotel, Abuja. We were all checked into Sheraton where we rested and freshened up. We had our breakfast there at the expense of the airline, and, about 2pm, the airline brought another bus that took us to the airport where we boarded a local flight back to Lagos. All expenses were borne by KLM. Other foreign airlines did the same thing for their passengers.
I do not expect local airlines that are struggling to survive to put their stranded passengers in a five star hotel. Simple courtesy and apologies with some bottled water would have calmed nerves. But do they care?
Last July, the Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, reminded the airline operators of their obligations to their passengers. Sirika said: “On domestic flights, delay beyond one hour, carrier should provide refreshment, and one telephone call, or one SMS, or one e-mail. They should send you an SMS or email or call you to say, ‘I am sorry, I am delaying for one hour.’
“Delay for two hours and beyond, the carrier shall reimburse passengers the full volume of their tickets. Delay between 10pm and 4pm, carrier shall provide hotel accommodation, refreshment, meal, two free calls, SMS, email and transport to-and-fro airport.”
The same rules apply for international flights.
In all, this is not an attempt to embarrass Arik. It’s not that other local airlines are better; almost all of them behave the same way. I have had very nasty experiences with many of them, including the biggest one, Air Peace. I always pity them, knowing the harsh business environment in which they operate. Sometimes, the weather condition could affect their services and all that. My only problem with them is that they don’t know how to handle their passengers when there are sour tales like this last flight of mine to Abuja. But, do we even call it last flight or first flight?