By Lawani Mikairu & Daniel Eteghe

Lagos—Hundreds of Arik Air passengers were yesterday stranded at the General Aviation Terminal, GAT, Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos following the grounding of its operations by  unions over the airline’s  N12.5 billion indebtedness to the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN.

Vanguard observed that all Arik Air schedule flights for the day were disrupted by the unions on the platform of the Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, ATSSSAN, National Union of Air Transport Employees, NUATE, and National Union of Pensioners, NUP, as none of its flight had flown from Lagos to any other destination for the day.

Most of the affected passengers decried the inability of the management of Arik Airline to inform them ahead of the situation, stressing that they only got to the airport and met the  situation.

Speaking on the picketing of Arik Air, Vice Chairman, NUATE, Idowu Adesola, said the picketing was because of alleged refusal of Arik Airline to pay its N12.5 billion debt owed FAAN.

He said “It is all about Arik Air and all other debtors owing FAAN at the detriment of FAAN. FAAN had to have its revenue coming in by making all the necessary things available for aviation stakeholders. If those provisions are made, they need to pay  for what they are utilizing.

Arik Air is owing FAAN N12.5 billion, it was supposed to be N5.8 billion but they denied N3.4 billion on invoice rating. Now that it is N12.5 billion, they are not ready to pay and they are telling everybody that they are even bigger than the government.

It is not just FAAN alone, they owe  NCAA and even NAMA and they owe some others, including their workers. They just paid their workers March salary recently which is not too good for somebody who has worked. So they believe that if Buhari is changing things, they are not ready to go along with Buhari to change things”.