By Chidinma Ufomadu
The Chief Executive Officer of Air Peace, Allen Onyema, says the refusal of the airline landing permit to evacuate Nigerians, who were stranded in the United Kingdom came as a surprise.
Onyema explained that he didn’t expect the British government to behave in such manner and suggests that the act was only a bid to hinder the effort of the Nigerian Government and Air Peace to evacuate stranded Nigerians in the United Kingdom.
The Chief Executive Officer on Tuesday night during a webinar absolved the Federal Government of any blame on the flight.
He further explained that they engaged the services of Global Air Charter for an easy deportation of the stranded Nigerians due to a demand for a Third Country Operator approval.
He stated that, “I want to thank Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, for his support. When this issue happened, a lot of people who were uninformed about this issue told me that it must be the minister that did this.
“I want to use this opportunity to let everyone know that when I called the minister on this issue, he swung into action.
“The Federal Government of Nigeria gave maximum support; it is not an Air Peace issue. The minister saw it as a Nigerian issue because the name of Nigeria was being thrown into the mud by whatever Britain was doing due to the fact that it was a diplomatic charter.
“I want to use this opportunity to clear the air that the Minister of Aviation gave heavy support even in the night. He had to send me voice notes. He had to engage the external affairs minister on what was happening.”
Onyema explained that the economical cost of the flight was part of the reason the British Government refused giving them a landing permit.
He further said, “When asked why they were turning their backs just 48 hours to the flight, they said we should produce a TCO. We produced the mail from ICAO saying during the pandemic, these rules are relaxed and you can fly without TCO.
“They did not know that earlier, they sent a mail to us that we didn’t need TCO. They sent us the mail and that was how we did the first evacuation flight.
“What opened their eyes was the fact that a Nigerian airline was sending two airplanes coming to take Nigerians from Britain at a ridiculously low price, which was exposing everybody and they stopped us.”
He added, “I did what I did in order to show my support to these two ministers and to demonstrate that Nigeria is not all about money.
“I don’t want Nigerians to suffer abroad because it could have taken another two weeks to get another airline. These people have stayed there for four months.
“I had 40 people on that airplane flying free of charge because they did not have money. I support the DG of NCAA when he said there should not be personalization of blames. We all must come together to see aviation survives.”
The Air Peace CEO said that the UK could not accommodate two flights from the country, despite the fact that UK had airlines doing 21 frequencies to Nigeria.
