By Adedapo Adesanya
The Federal Government of Nigeria has imposed a N1 million fine on Flairjet, a UK based charter company, that was impounded for operating a flight into the country during the current ban flights into Nigeria.
This was announced by the Minister of Aviation, Mr Hadi Sirika, who confirmed the development on his official twitter handle.
Mr Sirika said the airline violated the Civil Aviation Regulations Implementation Standards and that the government has reported their misdemeanor to the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority and the UK High Commission in Nigeria.
He said: “Flairjet were found to violate our Civil Aviation Regulations Implementation Standards 1.3.3(a) Table 2(IV)7(a) and IS 1.3.3(a)) Table 2 (VIII) (4). The maximum penalty for each is N500,000. We caused them to pay and reported their callous misdemeanor to UK CAA, MFA and the UK High Commission.”
Last week, the Aviation Minister revealed that a Legacy 600 charter jet with registration number G-ERFX belonging to Flairjet, an airline that operates from Birmingham airport, UK, came in from Cotonou and landed in Lagos at 12.13pm on Sunday, May 17, 2020 carrying passengers.
He said the company applied several times to operate humanitarian flights and that approval was given, but it decided to operate commercial services, charging money and flying in and out of the country. The crew was arrested and aircraft was immediately impounded. The pilots were quarantined for 14 days.
Business Post had reported that the federal government announced an extension of the existing ban on domestic and foreign flights until Sunday, June 7, to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic within the country’s borders.
