By Lawani Mikairu

In spite of the concession granted aviation unions members to join the ongoing nation wide strike next week , 2nd October, the flight operations of  Air Peace  was yesterday temporarily disrupted for some hours  by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) who invaded  the General Aviation Terminal, GAT, of the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos and forced the airline to stop processing passengers.

Air Peace

This invasion, according to Air Peace Executive Chairman,  Barrister Allen Onyema who briefed the media on the incident, resulted  in the airline loosing more than 66 million naira that would have accrued from ticket sales and other services. He wondered why only Air Peace was targeted by the union members.

The labour unions members who  arrived as early as 6.30am, took positions inside and outside the terminal building for over four hours. Passengers who had arrived at the airport for the early morning flights could not access the terminal while those who were already inside could not be checked in as the airline staff were  forced to desert their duty post.

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However, normal flight operations went on smoothly  at the Murtala Muhammed Airport Terminal 2 where Med-View Airline, Overland Airways, Dana Air, Azman Air and Aero operate from. The unions did not go to the terminal operated by Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Ltd (BASL).

Reacting to the disruptions,  Air Peace Communication Manager, Mr. Chris Iwarah described the  labour’s action as “sad” and “unfortunate”.

Iwarah said :“It is sad and with what the unions have done, it affects all our operations. And because we did not follow our schedule we may be unable to do our late flights into airports like Owerri, Benin, Ondo because the landing on those airports are visual….

“We are not against the unions’ strike but they can carry out their industrial action without using it to affect the private businesses of others,” he said.