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Outrage greets Arik’s apology to suffocating passengers

By BusinessNews Staff on April 10, 2014

The management of Arik Air has described passengers who protested the 55-minute suffocation onboard its airplane on March 31, as “unruly.”

The passengers, including R&B artiste Banky W, who were travelling from Lagos to New York aboard the airline, had experienced discomfort occasioned by failure of the plane’s air-conditioning system to work, prior to departure.

In a 10-minute video, which has circulated widely on social media, children and adults were seen pulling off their clothes as the heat in the plane became unbearable.

As the heat bit harder, the passengers demanded that the crew members allow them to exit the plane to prevent them from suffocating to death.

A voice from the plane’s public address system was also heard appealing to the passengers to exercise more patience. However, rather than getting the frayed nerves calmed, the passengers were angered the more.

Believing that none of the crew members appeared to be sympathetic to their cause, a handful of them attempted to force their way into the cockpit, to get the pilot and his assistant aware of their situation.

“I am dying here. I can’t stay here anymore; they should open the exits. I can’t see anybody to talk to,” a male traveller who was seen in the video putting on only a singlet, yelled.

Also, an elderly man wearing a pair of glasses while expressing concerns over the development stated, “This is trouble. Do they want to kill us here? I don’t understand this kind of a thing.”

While the said suffocation lasted, some of the statements the apprehensive passengers chorused included, ‘This is a sign of trouble’; ‘Why are we being held hostage here?; ‘This is hostage taking’; ‘It is not good for our health’; ‘This is wickedness.’”

At a point a female passenger putting on a black and white stripped blouse while regretting her decision to fly the airline, alleged that she experienced a similar situation last December.

“I was here last December and this same thing happened. Let them just get us out of here,” she alleged.

But assuring members of the public that it had initiated measures to prevent a repeat of the incident, the airline wrote on its Facebook page on Tuesday that it was unfortunate that the protesting passengers were aggressive.

“Arik Air wishes to thank all guests who endured this inconvenience patiently, despite both the trying circumstance and the unfortunate exhibition of aggression, to both people and property, by a minority of unruly passengers onboard the aircraft,” the airline stated in its apology.

Meanwhile, an outrage has followed the airline’s apology which many deemed disrespectful to the affected passengers.

Expressing their displeasure to the statement by the airline, some frequent air travellers wrote on its Facebook page that it was wrong for Arik to describe the protesting passengers as “unruly” and “aggressive.”

“Oh my God! You (Arik Air) even called the customers unruly. What! People paid for good service and all you gave them was crap. So, you expected them to sit and be quiet like morons.

“You guys are freaking disrespectful. You have no respect for your customers and then you still expect people to patronise you,” a concerned Nigerian, Lord Hosts, wrote on the airline’s Facebook page.

Handling genuine customer complaints, they argued, should involve a true sense of empathy as the incident would have been fatal had it been a passenger with a respiratory disease was aboard the plane.

Describing the apology as insincere, one Enitan Bolubo-Bolumole, based in Virginia, United States, stated that someone like her who suffers from Asthma might have gone into coma under such circumstances.

“I do not wish to be a wet rag on this topic but suffice it to say that it is a case of medicine after death. Why did the captain not respond to the banging on his cockpit door to allay the fears of passengers already seated on board and sweating like a pig roasting in the oven to explain the reason(s) which you now state in your letter of apology?

“Your company is lucky that there was no passenger on the flight like me who suffers an asthma problem. That kind of person would have conked out and in need of medical evacuation. Your company must take note and implement changes for travellers with medical issues,” Bolubo-Bolumole advised.

However, calls have been made to the airline to compensate the affected passengers adequately for the incident.

For Ada Ibe-Offurum the best way Arik Air can handle the situationis “to either compensate the affected passengers for all or some of their incurred flight fee or vouchers for a heavily discounted or complementary future flight.”

[Punch]

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