This may really not be a happy moment for management of Royal Air Maroc, the national carrier of Morocco, as the airline is facing very tough time explaining to official of a European Union member state how rotten meat and other food items invested with maggots got on board its flight into the European country.
African Business Travel News (ABTN) got wind of the incident after a letter to the effect was delivered to some concerned authorities and the subsequent meetings that followed in Lagos last Tuesday.
A reliable source that attended the meeting told ABTN that that an aircraft used by the airline to operate a flight to a Europe was quarantined when it was detected that its entire luggage compartment was filled with maggots.
Subsequent investigations to the source of the maggots revealed that they came from luggage containing rotten fish, meats and other foodstuffs loaded into the aircraft without quarantine’s phytosanitary certification seals.
ABTN learnt the North Africa based airline was made to pay heavy penalty after the de-infestation and fumigation of the aircraft by the officials of the European country, this however led the home office of the airline to query its Lagos officials.
Our correspondent who visited Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos on Wednesday afternoon saw top officials of the airline in Lagos leaving the airport after attending a meeting attended by some agencies in the airport..
An airport source however blamed the airline for the development claiming that Africans travelers don’t travel with rotten foodstuff but the baggage delay issue which the airline is synonymous with could be responsible for the agricultural products to get rotten before they were flown into Europe.
The source who also claimed that some corrupt officials of the airline noted for aiding passengers not to submit their luggage to quarantine officials for proper screening, packaging and certifications after passing through the electronic screening machines should be held responsible for the development.
“Air Maroc is noted for baggage delays both on its outward and inward flights. Because it is one of the lowest fare foreign airlines operating into Nigeria, many Nigeria prefer to fly it. It carries any foodstuff without discrimination. Check- in luggage hardily arrived with passengers at their final destinations after connecting flights in Morocco. Passengers would have to wait for days or even weeks, before collecting their luggage. This is the major reason many food items and meat got rotten before arriving at their final destinations in Europe or elsewhere.
“But if officials of the airline have been sincere enough, they should have advised passengers on the need to submit their luggage to quarantine for screening, packaging and certification. They would have been counseled by these officials on which agricultural produce they can take overseas. But rather than do these they encouraged them to evade the quarantine’s screening because of the tips they would get from the passengers,” the airport source claimed.
Our correspondent who monitored the airline’s check-in processes the airport on during the week, however, reported that top officials of the airline in Lagos were at hand to ensure thorough compliance with NAQS’ phytosanitary procedures.
An official of the airline engaging in manual searching of passengers’ luggage in the airport but who spoke under the condition of anonymity, said, “We know that there are screening machines which can detect anything in the airport. But the machines cannot detect micro organisms that come with the food items in the luggage. So we have to do this to ensure that nothing escaped through here without going through proper screening and certification. Food items such as fish, melon, bush meat and even tubers of yam found in any luggage would be taken out to NAQS for certifications”.
However all efforts to get an official statement from the airline officials in Lagos proved abortive. Calls made to the Lagos Island office were dropped each time the issue was raised with the receiver on the other end.
