PILOTS of the impounded aircraft owned by a British company, FlairJet are to compulsorily undergo a 14-day quarantine in line with the rules and guidelines of the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 and National Centre of Disease Control (NCDC).
The Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, disclosed this on Monday during a briefing by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 in Abuja adding that the company had applied for humanitarian serices which was approved but it flouted the approval and diverted to commercial flight.
Sirika also explained that his earlier statement on the issue reflected a wrong name of the company which was later verified as FlairJet and not Flair Aviation as published first.
“There is a company called Flairjet. I want to apologise that I tweeted on Sunday afternoon when the fasting was biting harder and we verified this as Flair Aviation. The correct name is Flairjet and it is a UK- registered company.
“They have an aircraft, Legacy 600, and the registration number of the aircraft is GPRFX. Their business address is Business Aviation Centre, Terminal Road, Birmingham International Airport, West Midlands and their code is B26QN.
“This company applied severally as to operate humanitarian flights and we did approve. It is very clear at the beginning of this exercise that we defined what those flights should be: essential flights basically – cargo, medical evacuation, medical supplies, and so on and so forth.
“Unfortunately, this company decided to become commercial in their service, charging money and flying people in and out”, Sirika said.
The minister vowed that though they are British citizens, but all our laws will apply on them as far as they are in Nigeria soil.
“In the first place, the whole essence of a lockdown is to ensure there is no movement of persons freely because this COVID-19 we are all spending sleepless nights for happened because somebody travelled abroad. So, we believe this shouldn’t happen.
“Current status, we are investigating the matter right now, it would finish very soon. The crew is British nationals. The pilots are subjected to 14- day quarantine at the moment while the investigation goes on. Whatever is there in our laws will be applied to the fullest.”
It will be recalled that Federal government impounded the aircraft for operating a commercial flight against the humanitarian operations it was given approval to do to Nigeria.
“COVID-19. Flair Aviation, a UK company, was given approval for humanitarian operations, but regrettably we caught them conducting commercial flights. This is callous! The craft is impounded, crew being interrogated. There shall be maximum penalty. Wrong time to try our resolve!” Sirika had tweeted.