Drama as Delta Airlines throws out two Nigerian passengers who complained of lack of social distancing on aircraft

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A Delta Airlines DL 054 departing from Atlanta’s Hartfield Jackson International Airport in the State of Georgia United States of America and bound for the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos Nigeria was on December 30, 2020, beset with a series of dramas culminating in the forcible removal by the United States Air Marshalls and Airport police of two female passengers of Nigerian nationality from the economy cabin of the aircraft.

The unpleasant event, according to reports obtained by KAFTANPOST from eyewitnesses directly and contemporaneously with the unfolding saga, began when the Lagos bound aircraft scheduled to depart from Atlanta at 5:45 PM local time (EST) and arrive in Lagos Nigeria at 10:35 AM local time (WAT) was delayed by over one hour before the Captain of the flight announced to the passengers that the crew needed to remove from the aircraft some uncooperative passengers who refused other passengers to be seated in the seats immediately next to them on the basis that such close contacts endangered their health due to risks associated with contracting COVID-19 in such a jam-packed seating arrangement.

The full import of the removal measures dawned on the hapless passengers of the controversial flight when law enforcement at the airport insisted that uncooperative passenger removal protocols warranted that every passenger on the aircraft had to disembark from the aircraft before air marshals could storm the aircraft to remove the two adamant passengers. After another hour of joyless delay and at about 7:25 PM local time, passengers began to disembark and return to the boarding area of departure gate F2 in the international terminal to enable the law enforcement agents already massed at the door of the Airbus A330-300 aircraft with ship number N825NW, space to storm the airliner to effect forcible removal of the two passengers.

At about 8 PM local time, when the last of the cooperative passengers had disembarked, law enforcement agents removed the two Nigerian women whose protest was at the centre of the entire unpleasant drama. The removal of the two women passengers appeared to have ended in an anticlimax however as the two besieged passengers both cooperated with the half dozen air marshals and police and were removed without violence and immediately placed under arrest at gate F2.

Immediately upon the removal of the protesting women, other passengers were reboarded onto the same aircraft for departure to Lagos without the airline making any adjustment to the fully packed seating arrangements which had led to the civil disobedience of the two female passengers in the first place. No other passengers refused to cooperate with the Airline ground staff or gate agents, as every passenger allowed to board briskly returned to their initially assigned seats.

While the protracted and unpleasant drama of forcible passenger disembarkation, removal of the complainants and reboarding of the complacent passengers was enacting, a debate arose between different groups of passengers clustered around gate F2 as to who was in the right. While a section of the passengers termed the two removed passengers as obstinate and recalcitrant troublemakers liable for the flight delay, on the ground that refusal to disembark when ordered by the aircraft’s captain was a violation of US Federal Aviation Regulations, other passengers were of the view that the actual lawbreaker was Delta Airlines who had claimed that the safety and security of its passengers were of paramount importance by stipulating onerous social distancing requirements within the airport terminal, including a minimum of 6 feet distance between persons standing or sitting at the airport, only to hypocritically pack the same passengers like tinned sardines within the aircraft cabin for an 11-hour transatlantic flight from Atlanta to Lagos.

Other passengers commented on the disparity between Delta practices on US domestic flights and international flights to other destinations where Delta Airlines is known to block empty seats between passengers in the economy cabin and leave most aisle seats unoccupied to maintain physical distancing on one hand, and the seemingly uncaring attitude of same Delta Airlines in the Atlanta to Lagos route where practically every seat was occupied but for two empty seats earlier assigned to passengers who did not show up.

An aviation attorney consulted by kaftanpost in the course of this story is of the view that both Delta Airlines and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) have joint responsibility for the fiasco because Delta Airlines must balance the health and safety considerations of its passengers and crew against the quest for profits and act responsibly. More of the regulatory responsibility for the safety and health of air passengers inbound for Nigeria and within Nigerian airspace lies with the NCAA, he posited. He further stated that Delta Airlines is bound to obey every regulatory protocol issued by NCAA and NCDC, including seating arrangements and spacing of passengers on board flights to, from and within Nigeria. It is mandatory, he further said, for Delta Airlines to forward the manifest of its passengers to Nigeria before departing the United States. From such a manifest alone, both NCAA Port Health and NCDC must have known that the aircraft is fully loaded with no spacing and should have directed Delta Airlines on what to do.

The Aviation lawyer with two decades of industry experience came to the opinion that it is reasonable to conclude that Delta Airlines was emboldened in the dismissive treatment of its two loyal customers because the Atlanta based airline was confident that it had not broken the applicable rules of the NCAA despite the discomfiture of the affected passengers. This point he further buttressed by reference to the jampacked seating arrangements on domestic flights within Nigeria.

At a few minutes to 9PM, with all passengers re-embarked , save the two latter-day Rosa Parks who had carried their nonviolent protest to the end, the Airbus 330-300 with call-sign N825NW, which had earlier in the day returned belatedly from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport in France to Atlanta Georgia USA, causing the initial delay suffered by the flight to Lagos assumed its Atlanta to Lagos flight number Delta 054 and began taxing to Lagos but not until another half hour to remove the luggage of the two rusticated female passengers, as if to sever the last bond between the two unhappy payers and the unyielding service provider in a tale of no-love-lost ending of what was meant to be a yuletide trip home for the dejected travellers who for the symbolic act of silent protest were having a long, unpleasant chat with the agents of the State as their silent and compliant fellow passengers ensconced in the belly of the heavily laden bird, headed home with mixed feelings suppressed soliloquy and debates unsettled.

For one night, the combined might of big business and big government had proved itself right and crushed the feeble protests of two economy passengers. By this time, the winter night sky had already become dark over Atlanta and Eastern United States. It was even darker in West Africa where the Lagos bound aeroplane was now taking off to.

As the Captain pressed full throttle to hug the clouds, airborne and pivoting towards the Atlantic Ocean in the general direction toward the western seaboard of Africa, many questions must occupy the minds of passengers and crew of this disgruntled flight, not the least among which must be safe arrival, the possibility of COVID-19 infection and whether justice had been done to the two removed passengers sharing the custody of the airport authorities.

Only the light of dawn on both sides of the Atlantic can pierce into the bowel of time, as the big aeroplane involved in this big story, owned by the biggest airline heading to the biggest country in Africa is still airborne at press time.

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