ARIK AIR’S CONSTANT MEGALOMANISM =A STATEMENT FROM THE PASSENGERS ON
FLIGHT 706.

On the 1st of April, 2012 at about 3 o clock in the afternoon, passengers
got to the Murtala Mohammed Airport Lagos to board Arik Air Flight 706.

The flight was supposed to take off at 5:00pm but sadly enough and as is
the norm with Arik we were delayed till about 10:00pm before eventually
leaving Lagos for Port Harcourt.
The journey was a very terrible one as there was serious turbulence and the pilot’s carelessness was glaring, it was screaming and prayer all the way as passengers thought the plane would crash.

We got to Port Harcourt where the plane bounced around in turbulence
(hovering over PH) for upwards of 30 minutes!
The Pilot suddenly announced -“Ladies and gentlemen, we are sorry; we will not be able to land here in Port Harcourt, because there are no Arik Staff on ground to refuel the
plane for takeoff back to Lagos and the lights on the runway have been switched off, we then turned round in the air to Lagos amidst so much protestation and got there around midnight.

Everyone remained in the plane for about another hour then some Arik Air
staff came and retrieved all expatriates as well as a very sick Nigerian man accompanied by a teenager (who was uncontrollably violent from the beginning of the flight and got worse during the turbulence, hitting everywhere looking for an escape route while claiming to want to jump out and die but for the help of a lady Mrs. Victor-Ogbondah also in business class and who managed to keep him under control but not without minor injuries, much later they came back for some more people, most who were known to their staff , for a while we were left on the plane
We wondered what was going on as we were left there for some more minutes.
.
At this time everyone was highly tense.

Every one of us remaining in the plane (Nigerians) became really disturbed
asking why Blacks were left alone in the plane for so long whereas all expatriates were
taken away but we still kept calm until eventually they came and herded us
into a bus, before long a lady Arik staff became extremely rude the same woman (who was also one of those banned from this flight- Ogbondah Elo) claiming at the same time that her name was not on the manifest, she went on to call her expatriate boss who wanted to physically get her off the bus but we all added our voice in her support.
We felt that it was very unfair as she was not originally meant to be on that flight as she came in from Dubai and was meant to have connected earlier but her luggage was erroneously was sent to Benin instead of Port Harcourt, this made the Arik manager on duty issue her the business class ticket for that earlier discomfort.
The female staff’s spite and rude behavior coupled with some veiled racist comments that the grey-haired expatriate staff of Arik made did not go down well with the passengers at all and there was a hot exchange of words between the more assertive of the passengers and Arik staff.
Eventually nerves were calm and the expatriate told us he had arranged for a bus to take us to a comfortable hotel till morning.

The bus (without security of any sort) took us together with our luggage and valuables around 1:30 -2:00 am towards Oshodi ,one of the most notorious and unsafe areas of Lagos,
so many questions started running through our minds: where were these people
taking us to? What if armed robbers attacked us? etc.

We were eventually taken to a Hotel in Oshodi where we were told that
they informed the expat they had only 4 rooms available and which the hotel does not use for accomodation anymore but he claimed that we were Nigerians and should manage, 4 rooms for all of 15 passengers !!!!!! The rooms were dingy and the only ventilation was from standing fans, we all decided that we were not going to be lodged in such a hotel and decided to
return to the airport to express our displeasure and demand our rights, we
got to the airport to find out that all Arik staff had absconded and the
only option we had was sleeping in the bus at the Airport which is what we
did hoping that Arik would keep their promise of flying out of Lagos before
7am that morning.
We were definitely angry yet we kept quiet and slept even in the bus.

The day broke and we were offered sachet water by the Mobile Police around
us so as to clean our faces.
Natural Conventions state directly that we should have been boarded on the first flight the following morning, but the station Manager rudely asked us to leave the line and wait until we were called as “he wanted to attend to VIPs”, one of the passengers said Arik was
a stupid airline and the manager promptly called him a fool, the verbal
altercation which ensued was not more/less than has been seen in the
service industry in much lesser situations.

Arik caused us great humiliation in addition to endangering our lives (with
that flight that could have turned out to be such a great disaster flying
us back and forth in such horrible weather manned by a daredevil pilot and
sending us to Oshodi in the dead of the night with no security , to add
insult to injury also violating our basic human rights by not only refusing to
give us adequate shelter but also throwing insults and racist comments at
us all the while delaying us at the airport for approximately 16 hours and
even more for some passengers.

While still in the scene of these mal-expressions, there came a “calmer”
manager who gave his email address as
Emmanuel.nwankpa@arikair.com , he addressed us and negotiation resumed they
promised us each free tickets to any destination of our choice in Nigeria as compensation.

Arik did not make good on this promise and instead the compensation we
received was further humiliation by publicly listing the names of the three
passengers who negotiated the free ticket with Arik amongst terrorists and
fraudsters as permanently blacklisted from flying Arik air.

The matter at this point is simple the passengers had told Arik of their
intent to sue the airline and were falsely placated so as to prevent legal
action , we the passengers on flight 706 are unhappy that we did not seek
recourse in the law and in the regulatory bodies such as the SON and the
Consumer protection commission.

We had to go back to our daily lives and numerous responsibilities, however
with the addition of salt to injury; we are of the resolution that justice
delayed is not justice denied and we will file reports with all the
appropriate agencies and seek redress for all this injustice in the courts
of law.
Will Arik Air also blacklist the lawyers, judges and investigatory bodies
who will prosecute, investigate and possibly sanction them, as they have
climbed the dizzying pinnacles of corporate bullying?
This we are patiently waiting to see.

Signed passengers on flight 706

this is bad, very bad

This is a very sad story,I wish Arik had a strong competitor,they would know how to treat their customers better.Unfortunately,most of the airlines available are even much worse than Arik, when it comes to customer service and Air worthiness.My brother had a similar experience over the out-gone weekend,this time with Aero,he booked a flight for 10am on saturday,only to be informed a day before departure,that the flight has been re-scheduled for 4pm same day (saturday),he arrived the airport as early as 3pm,but the flight did not start boarding until 6pm,after boarding,they had to wait inside the plane for additional 1hr only to be told by 7pm that the flight would not be able to take off and has been cancelled,what a waste of precious time!!,the infuriated passengers simply barricaded the Aero counter and hounded their staff until they agreed to refund,which they dutifully did.

Travelling in Nigeria has become a nightmarish venture,with tales of cancelled and risk laden flights,road accidents and armed robbery.I wish we had a reliable and efficient rail system,presently its either Arik,Aero or you go by bus.

I wish your write up would get the publicity it deserves,you dont treat customers with such impudence and expect to have a pat on the back.