British Airways

The ugly events surrounding British Airways flight BA075 of March 27, 2008 have refused to die down despite BA apologizing via a 'proxy.' The summary of the events is that BA pilot of BA 075 ordered 136 passengers off his plane when they protested the handcuffed arrest of a passenger who was himself protesting the maltreatment of a deportee. It did not take long for the incident to become a Facebook campaign http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=14986012353 . My initial reaction was disgust but i tried to get BA's side of the story, but my disgust turned into disbelief. http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=110311

I wish this was an isolated case but BA in particular is percieved as being arrogant and unresponsive to the needs of its Nigerian passengers. This is certainly not a first. BA needs to tag the line that great airlines like Emirates are toeing, service, great service shines through, and its not a function of your PR mans eloquence.

init

Nigerian Bermuda Triangle

It was Leonard Lawal a Nigerian stringer for Fortune magazine who first brought it to my notice. Contrary to my last post, the missing Beechcraft 1900D has not yet been found. This is the third in a series of accidents in the region. Two controlled flights into terrain CFIT's, (plane crashes to the uninitiated) have occured here in the last decade. A helicopter crashed in Obudu in 1992, killing ten persons, and two years ago, on Sunday September 17, 2006, a Donier aircraft, NAF 003, flying from Abuja to the resort in Obudu crashed on the Nkokugh mountains. Several service men lost thier lives. What is it about the area? Bebi airstrip is about 1ooo feet above sea level and surrounded by thickly forested mountains as high as 4000 feet above sea level, and it is uncharted territory not covered by aviation radar. A veritable Bermuda Triangle. There have been claims that the airstrip is illegal, which is also to say that the Shell airstrip in Osubi, Warri is illegal. The problem however does not lie in the difficult terrain only but in the essential 'unregulated nature' of the airstrip, putting in effect, pilots and travelers to the airstri p at grave risk. One can never tell if the ATC at the end of the line is drunk and having a bad day and tells you winds are gusting up to 40 knots while the reality is 200 knots. Perhaps it is time to hasten the regulation of airports and airstrips by the NCAA, of course the NCAA as it were suffers from a dearth of proffessionals who are already being lost due to attrition to private markets, to carry out this assignment. We cannot afford to loose more lives in this murky region.

Dont sweat the small stuff

Yet another aircraft, this time a Beechcraft 1900 D went down, in the Obudu Hills of Nigeria. Its not something that i want to think or talk about but after an accident free 2007, have we been so caught up in pursuing the big things that we have forgotten the little ones? Three persons , lost thier lives in the crash. I wonder why it took rescue operations nearly 48 hours to find them.

North American Airlines

North American Airlines is set to discontinue flights to Lagos from the US on 19th May, 2008. Purportedly this is to enable the airline concentrate on charter operations. NAA and Delta are the only airlines who fly direct to the US from Nigeria, at least pending when the US DOT clears Nigerian airlines to begin direct flights. Meanwhile another airline relative of NAA, World Airways is still struggling to re- enter the Nigerian market. i suppose they should just tell us the truth that they dont want to cannibalise each others market