Breaking: FG quarantines Pilot of seized UK aircraft

By Nwafor Sunday

Federal Government has on Monday quarantined the Pilot of the seized British aircraft for fourteen days, as it equally apologized for the use of Flair Aviation instead of Flairjet in its earlier statement.

Disclosing this, the minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, said, “There is a company called Flairjet. I want to apologise that I tweeted in the afternoon (on Sunday) when the fasting was biting harder and we verified this as Flair Aviation. The correct name is Flairjet and it is a UK registered company.

Recall that FG had yesterday impounded the aircraft for operating commercial flights into the country without approval. Simply put, the aircraft violated coronavirus lockdown order.

READ ALSO: Lockdown: Customs seizes smuggled rice, beans worth N12.7m in Kano

Reacting on that, Sirika, opined, “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.

“Current status, we are investigating the matter right now, it would finish very soon. The crew is British nationals. The pilots are subjected to 14 days quarantine at the moment while the investigation goes on. Whatever is there in our laws will be applied to the fullest.”

Vanguard