Air Peace passengers were stranded at the Murtala Mohammed Airport in Lagos on Thursday after their flight scheduled to take off at 10.45am to Warri, Delta State was delayed by three hours.
The Nigerian Economy received a report of the abnormal flight delay at 11.30am from a stranded passenger who said a multi-million naira business deal was at stake and lamented that the delay could lead to loss of the highly coveted contract the company had been pursuing for months.
Air Peace flight P47210 to Warri from Lagos scheduled to take off at 10.45am was shifted to 1.50pm on Thursday. The airline cited operational challenges.
“The most painful part of this delay was that I opted for Air Peace at the cost of N500,000 return ticket instead of Arik which sold for N309,000 at the time of booking. Now Arik has since gone,” the customer lamented.
Another customer bemoaned a gift of biscuits offered to them in the course of the delay.
“I have never heard of a flight being delayed for a whole three hours just at the time of boarding. If this was communicated to us yesterday, we would have been able to reschedule our appointments in Warri and also gained time to work at the office here in Lagos before leaving. It is a double loss. As if that was not enough, the airline is offering us small sachets of Digestive biscuits as if we are kindergarten pupils. I don’t know when we would get things right in this industry,” the passenger said.
On the cause of the delay, The Nigeria Economy gathered that the aircraft originally meant for the flight was under repair, a situation the airline failed to communicate to its pasengers until the time of boarding.
“A lot of mitigating factors led to the delay of that flight. There was an AOG (aircraft on ground, a phrase used to describe an aircraft under repair) which filtered in today. We tried to salvage that flight with a flight coming from Abidjan. However, there is a VIP movement in Abidjan, which is why the aircraft is so much delayed through that route but we’ve been given clearance now that the aircraft is gone and is on its way to Murtala Mohammed Airport to lift the affected passengers,” said an insider source, who pleaded anonymity.
The source said the passengers have been apologised to, saying the airline is always transparent.
