The Nigerian Government has announced that the pilots of a UK airline, Flairjet have been quarantined following the seizure of one of its aircraft for violating a ban of commercial flights due to Coronavirus.
Nigeria’s minister for aviation, Hadi Sirika, revealed that the aircraft was impounded after discovering that the airline was conducting commercial flights despite the ban.
Sirki revealed that the seized aircraft was a Legacy 600 with registration number GPRFX. He added that their office was situated at Business Aviation Centre, Terminal Road, Birmingham International Airport, West Midlands with code 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.”
“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.”
He revealed that the crew of the flight are all British nationals adding that the pilots have been put in 14 days quarantine pending completion of investigations.
