By Louis Iba
Hundreds of passengers were left stranded at various airports in Nigeria yesterday as pilots working for local carrier, Dana Air, downed tools in protest over unpaid financial allowances and entitlements.
Daily Sun learnt that the relationship between the management of the airline and the pilots got soiled in recent months with the pilots threatening to embark on a strike if all outstanding arrears of emoluments were not paid.
On Thursday (yesterday morning), the pilots made good their threat by refusing to resume for duties.
A visit to the Murtala Muhammed Airport Two (MMA2), Lagos, which serves as the hub to the airline showed many passengers frustrated and venting their anger on the cashiers, front desk or check-in officials demanding for refunds. Mostly affected were passengers scheduled for the early morning flights to Abuja and Port Harcourt airports from the MMA2.
Some of the affected passengers were seen making fresh bookings with other local airlines like Med-View, First Nation and Aero Contractors.
An official of the airline told aviation correspondents that the pilots’ strike was in no way connected to unpaid monthly salaries but other financial rewards, which the company ought to pay them but had failed to do so.
“Dana Air is not owing its pilots any monthly salary. The pilots are protesting because the management had few weeks ago promised to compensate them for the flight cancellations and delays caused by aviation fuel scarcity,” said the official.
“The monetary compensation ought to have been paid to them some few weeks back but the management of the airline kept shifting the goal post, a situation that led to the momentary grounding of flight operations by the pilots today,” the official added.
Spokesman for the airline, Mr. Kingsley Ezenwa, however, told journalists the grounding of the flights was due to operational reasons.
“Dana Air apologises to all passengers on its delayed early morning flights to Abuja and Port Harcourt,” said Ezenwa.
“The delay, which was due to operational reasons have been resolved and scheduled flights have commenced,” he added.