Chaos as Turkish Airlines suspends Lagos – Istanbul flight

…passengers stranded for four days in Lagos.
By Louis Ibah.
Air travellers flying directly from Lagos to Istanbul, Turkey are having a hell of time as Turkish Airlines has temporary grounded its operations on the route citing harsh weather conditions at Instanbul Airport as reason.
In the last four days, two sets of passengers on flights on the Lagos – Istanbul route have been left stranded in Lagos with untidy accommodation arrangements leading to protests by affected passengers. The first set of passengers were supposed to have travelled last Saturday out of the Murtala Muhammed Airport Lagos to Istabul, while the next batch of passengers should have been flown out on Monday.
Daily Sun learnt that while the airline had explained to the over 600 passengers that heavy snow had stalled flight operations into the Istanbul Airport in recent days, it however had initially failed to make adequate provisions to accommodate and feed the affected passengers pending when situations would be normal to allow the resumption of flight operations.
At present, the bulk of the passengers are lodged at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Festac, Lagos. But that didn’t come without some crisis as the hotel had to eject the passengers over non-settlement of rents two days ago.
The forced ejection led to protests by the passengers forcing a meeting between the airline and hotel management and the subsequent re-admittance of the passengers into the hotel. It was a chaotic scene at the hotel as some passengers recounted their ordeal to Daily Sun. The passengers also decried the continuous sale of tickets by Turkish Airline as a fraud even when it had not cleared the backlog of passengers stranded in Nigeria. One of the passengers, who identified his name as Sule told Daily Sun that he was supposed to have flown out on Saturday noting that he had incurred losses in his business due to the stalled flight. Sule who described as inhuman the treatment meted to the Nigerian passengers by the Turkish Airline officials also decried the inability of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) to rise to defend the rights of Nigerian passengers. “In all these crisis, we have not seen any NCAA official coming round to speak to us,” said Sule. “We are now two sets of passengers lodged in this hotel (Golden Tulip Lagos) and it is a very horrible experience for us. We were first ejected and later re-admited. But It is only some of us that are lucky that are lodged at Golden Tulip; others particularly those that were supposed to fly out on Monday scattered in other hotels around the airport,” said Sule.
The Nigerian passengers are however not convinced that the flight delays are merely occasioned by bad weather at the Istanbul airport given that other Europen carriers were still operating scheduled flights from Lagos. “There could be more to it than weather; the airline may be having technical problems with their aircraft and if they can’t explain this to us, then the NCAA should,” said another passenger who wouldn’t want to be named. Daily Sun learnt that the airline would commence flying the stranded passengers out of Lagos as from Sunday January 15,2017. The Turkish Airlines, in a statement said: “On behalf of Turkish Airlines Lagos, we regret the inconveniences in the disruption of Lagos to Istanbul flight due to bad weather issue on January 7.
“We hereby advise you to proceed to our Head Office at 1, Adeola Odeku Street, Victoria Island Lagos for a change of your ticket to other available dates or ask for a full refund at your ticket purchase unit. We hope to see you flying with us in the future.”