Flight operators while reacting to forced closure of the domestic terminal at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos, known as MMA2 on Wednesday said domestic airlines have lost about N1.5 billion so far due to the disruption by labour.
The flight operators accused labour of not exhausting discussions before they picket airport facilities or airline operations, noting that it should be the responsibility of labour to ensure that organsiations that employ its members make money in order to pay their workers.
Head of Communications of Dana Air, Kingsley Ezenwa told Newsmen that around April this year labour disrupted the operations of the airline from morning till night on allegation of casualisation of workers.
Ezenwa said Dana Air lost so much revenue due to the disruption “but the unions could not find anything because we do not casualise workers.
They disrupted our operations for nothing.”
He went further;
“Look at it this way, Dana Air operates nine flights from MMA2, Max Air, four flights, Azman Air, four flights, Medview, two , Aero Contractors, five flights and Arik Air, two flights.
All these flights were disrupted on Wednesday and that is a total of 26 flights. Just imagine the disappointment to the passengers and if you monetise what passengers have lost it will be in multimillion because the business activities of most of them were disrupted.”
For weeks BASL and aviation unions have been drawn in battle over the sack of workers for the former, which said that it had to lay off the workers due to the challenging economic times.
But labour insisted that BASL must recall the workers or its operations would be disrupted, which it started last Wednesday.
