Air Passengers Decry Flight Delays At PHIA

Air passengers at the Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa were apprehensive last weekend over frequent delays recorded in flight operations in recent time.
Some of them had expressed disappointments in airline schedules for movements from Port Harcourt to either Lagos or Abuja, especially as much of this was noticed in one of the notable airlines, the Airpeace Airline.
An Abuja-bound passenger, Chief Sampson Owei, who narrated his ordeal when interacting with aviation correspondents lamented that the departure time for the Airpeace flight to Abuja was scheduled for 2:30pm, but as at 6.oopm he was still at the Port Harcourt airport waiting for the flight and lamented that he had missed the afternoon engagement he was hoping to meet.
One of the air passengers, Joseph Ikem on his part decried the rate at which passengers have been short- changed due to delay in movement, saying that many profitable engagements had been missed in the process.
However, when The Tide called at the airpeace station office at the airport to find out the cause of the frequent delays in recent time, it was gathered that the aviation fuel, popularly known as “Jet A1” was very scarce in Abuja.
A female officer who did not want her name published told our correspondent that for over one month now, the aviation fuel has been very scarce in Abuja, resulting to delays and rescheduling of flights.
She said that what they usually do now is to load the fuel for “to and fro” for every journey, so as to minimise delay in flight movements.
The Tide had observed that airlines operators in recent time had not been keeping to the time schedule, especially in the last three weeks, as flights had been delayed frequently ranging from 30 minutes to six hours.

By: Corlins Walter.