…Apologises to affected Nigerian passengers
The management of Lome, Togo based airline, Asky has attributed the flight disruption which led to manhandling of Nigerians by security forces at Lome International Airport on Saturday to glitches in the Information Technology (IT) which affected its Central Reservation System.
The airline which described the incident as regrettable has however apologised to the affected Nigerian passengers with a promise that such an issue would never reoccur again.
In a statement made available to African Business Travel News (ABTN) on Sunday the management of the airline said: “For a few days now, ASKY has been trying to fix an IT system discrepancy problem that affected its Central Reservation System, which coordinates bookings on codeshare flights with its partner airlines and airport check in system.
“This discrepancy affected some of our esteemed passengers with connection in Lomé airport going to Lagos from United States’ operated flight ET509 by Ethiopian airlines, in such a way that their bookings were not found on the ASKY operated flight KP62 already fully booked from Lomé to Lagos on Saturday December 18, 2021.
“We sincerely apologize and regret that such an isolated incident happened between our esteemed passengers and the airport security forces. We assure everyone that the issue has been resolved to avoid any other further occurrences.”
On the invitation of additional security forces to the airport, the airline however said that security personnel were brought in to restrain some of the passengers who became very aggressive and took control of the security and transit aareas in the terminal building.
“Some passengers became overwhelmed as their bookings were not found in the system, they blocked the security control area and transit area for other passengers and forced their way aggressively to the boarding gates. In this process they became physical with the agents and some police forces at the airport until additional support had to be called in for them to be restrained,” the airline explained.
The statement added, “ASKY management present at the scene assured the passengers to be calm as immediate arrangements were made to charter a separate aircraft to transport the passengers whose bookings were not found. All passengers finally got to their destination Lagos same day using the separate chartered aircraft.”
