Barely two months of commencing flight operations into Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, Medview airline has shut down its flight operations into that country due to lack of aircraft to service the lucrative route.
At a news briefing in Lagos, Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the airline, Alhaji Muneer Bankole said the operations would be put on hold till March this year.
He observed that its European partner, Euro-Atlantic which the aircraft in operation was leased from was now unable to meet the airline requirement in providing the necessary capacity.
He gave the indications that resumption of flights would commence when its own aircraft B767-300ER christened “Abeke” returns from complete refurbishment in the UK.
“We decided for the remaining winter schedule which covers up to the 24th of March to suspend the Dubai operations till 24th of March when we hope and am such with the documents available at our disposal, our Abeke will be fully back, we are doing a total refurbishment, complete total with the three classic of business class, premium economy and economy class, the aircraft is likely to be available before the end of February”.
Passengers who apparently had booked ahead their Dubai flights, Bankole said would be flown to their destinations via an interline arrangements.
Medview commenced flight into Dubai on the 7th of December last year and had about 80 percent passenger capacity on-board.
Bankole noted that the suspension of its Dubai operations had in no way affected its Jeddah operations, adding that it would continue to maintain its Jeddah schedule every Thursday via Kano until the issue of Biometric which is now a requirement in Saudi was resolved.
He however noted that, the biometric introduction by the the Saudi government had slowed down traffic.
” The Jeddah Author has introduced a new system which made Nigerians who want to go through the new approach had to do what we call biometric which is a requirement for them to, because before you collect people’s passport, you take it to embassy on their behalf and you sort out the visas and then you return the passport back to them. But these days, its the same like UK, so you have to go there and apply your fingerprint, that is the new rule by Saudi government, so that has slow down the number of passengers going to Jeddah, so that made us to reduce the traffic, to enable people to go Thursdays perform their umrah and everything and return back without any interruption.
On the West Coast, Bankole said,”we are currently operating on Tuesday and Saturday to Anglophone countries and on Monday and Friday to Francophone countries.
” the operations have been stable, the Anglophone is a wonderful route, there are a lot of benefits on that route.
The Medview MD/CEO, thanked its esteemed passengers for their unflinching support during their moments of trials and promised that the airline would continue to deliver on its on time schedule, safety and comfort it was known for.
