Medview Airlines to London Gatwick was canceled due to huge debts the airline is owing it’s handling Agency in London.
Sources informed NigeriaTravelsMart.com (NTM) that the airline is owing huge amount of money to its handling agency which made the Agency to decline offering services to Medview.
Yesterday Medview circulated a press statement that its operations into London was being sabotaged.
The airline in a statement signed by Isiaq Na-Allah, Executive Director Business Development and Commercial while informing their numerous passengers who were scheduled to travel in and out of London and Lagos on 26 Jan stated that the airline was informally informed by their handling agent that they will not be providing services to their aircraft.
Na-Allah said: “After the departure of our flight from Lagos to London on Wednesday 24 Jan, we were informally informed by our handling agent that they will not be providing services to our aircraft.
“We immediately sought intervention of the Gatwick Authority who is expected to be unbiased but joined the fray surprisingly. Not wanting to take chances, we sought for alternative handling arrangements to avert an ugly situation but this proved abortive.”
Med-View airline said that their passengers who were scheduled to come to Lagos on this service were denied boarding and it had to provide accommodations and logistics for them with the hope that it will clear the issue the next day and then operate the service.
The statement added: “Our European partner, EAA came and intervened but this also proved abortive. This we view strongly as unethical and draws a suspicious motive. In order to avoid more embarrassing situations we protected these passengers on other alternative carriers to Lagos. We strongly regret this situation.
As it became evident that our airplane will not be allowed to come and position to Lagos for our next rotation to London, we had no choice other than to cancel our London service today, Friday 26 Jan. This we effectively communicated to our passengers and protected them on other carriers. While some accepted the offer, some rejected insisting they want a particular carrier. We are presently working to resolve with these passengers,”
However inquiries from the press office of London Gatwick Airport confirmed that the airline was owing for services rendered and was not in a position to pay.
A Gatwick spokesman informed NTM: “The issues with recent Med-View flights have been due to the failure by the airline to secure the services required to handle passengers at the airport.
“The airline has not been meeting its obligations to passengers and has persistently failed to provide them with the certainty required to honour tickets passengers purchased in good faith.
“Gatwick staff have been assisting affected passengers where possible throughout and will continue to work with the airline and other authorities to ensure that Med-View honours its commitments to passengers.”
Shedding more light on the circumstances that instigated the flight cancellation, Mr. Bankole said the transaction done with Gatwick Authority was worth £1.5 million and a sum of £1.45 million has been paid since they started operations. ” Our outstanding to Gatwick authority was about £37, 000 and Gatwick authority with respect to their CEO, CCO, airport manager met me in London and we are full of appreciation. They paid hotel of £37, 000 on hotel during that crisis and I took it upon myself that we are going to pay them this money. They have no basis to do what they did. Nigeria needs to wake up. For Menzies our ground handling agent, they charge £5000 per flight and there must be a reconciliation. So, when you pay money for a service that has not been rendered; we have £45, 000 we kept as security account, which means that for every default, this £45, 000 will be accessed”, he concluded.
