Med-view Airlines has suspended its Dubai route till March 25, 2018, to sort out issues with its partners, Euro Atlantic as regard aircraft. Managing Director of Med-View, Alhaji Muneer Bankole disclosed this at a media briefing which held in Lagos on Monday. This is coming barely two months after the airline commenced flight operations into Dubai, the United Arab Emirates
While speaking, Bankole explained that this change in events was due to the fact that Euro-Atlantic, its European partner from which the aircraft in operation was leased from was now unable to meet the airline requirement in providing the necessary capacity. He however indicated that resumption of flights would commence when its own aircraft B767-300ER christened “Abeke” returns from complete refurbishment in the UK.
“We decided for the remaining winter schedule which covers up to the 24th of March to suspend the Dubai operations till 24th of March when we hope and am such with the documents available at our disposal, our Abeke will be fully back, we are doing a total refurbishment, complete total with the three classic of business class, premium economy and economy class, the aircraft is likely to be available before the end of February”. According to him, interline arrangements are being made for passengers who had booked ahead their Dubai flights.
Bankole noted that the suspension of its Dubai operations had in no way affected its Jeddah operations, adding that it would continue to maintain its Jeddah schedule every Thursday via Kano until the issue of Biometric which is now a requirement in Saudi was resolved. In his opinion, he noted that the biometric introduction by the the Saudi government had slowed down traffic.
“The Jeddah Author has introduced a new system which made Nigerians who want to go through the new approach had to do what we call biometric which is a requirement for them to, because before you collect people’s passport, you take it to embassy on their behalf and you sort out the visas and then you return the passport back to them. But these days, its the same like UK, so you have to go there and apply your fingerprint, that is the new rule by Saudi government, so that has slow down the number of passengers going to Jeddah, so that made us to reduce the traffic, to enable people to go Thursdays perform their umrah and everything and return back without any interruption.
On the West Coast, Bankole said,” We are currently operating on Tuesday and Saturday to Anglophone countries and on Monday and Friday to Francophone countries. The operations have been stable, the Anglophone is a wonderful route, there are a lot of benefits on that route.”
We had earlier reported that the airline’s operations to London was suspended due to debts owed to its handling agency.
