A shocking drama occurred in the Nigerian aviation industry on Sunday when a british aircraft flew passenger into the country despite the subsisting lockdown rule.
An obviously irked Federal Government swiftly reacted by impounding the Flairjet plane that landed at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.
It was gathered that FlairJet operated a Legacy 600 aircraft with registration G-ERFX into the Lagos airport after getting approval for humanitarian operations.
It was also learnt that the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority had begun investigations into the matter, as officials at the agency and the Federal Ministry of Aviation stated that the aircraft was not cleared for commercial flights.
According to ‘The Punch’, they noted that the country’s airports were still under lockdown to commercial flight operations, as further findings would tell why the crew of the impounded plane decided to fly into Lagos on Sunday.
The Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, announced the seizure via his official Twitter handle on Sunday, saying the aircraft was only authorised to conduct humanitarian flights.
According to him, the impounded aircraft has no approval outside humanitarian operations but was caught operating commercial flights.
The minister stressed that in addition to the confiscated aircraft, a “maximum penalty” would be imposed on the company for flouting the shutdown of the country’s airspace by the Federal Government to commercial flight operations.
