The Emir of Kano has a good case against Air Peace -By Charles Ogbu

The Emir of Kano has a good case against Air Peace but his palace official messed up everything with his misplaced entitlement mentality.

His complaint was a rightous one but the remedy he sought from Air-Peace was undeniably wrong.

If Air Peace delayed their Banjul (Gambia) to Lagos flight by over an hour which made them arrive behind schedule for the Lagos-Kano flight, as alleged in the petition to the NCAA which Air Peace statement did not refute, then the Emir and his people were justified in expressing anger. And Air-Peace ought to be held accountable because the Emir and his entourage DID NOT deliberately arrive late for their 6:15am Lagos-Kano flight. The Air-line caused their lateness by delaying their Banjul-Lagos flight for whatever reason.

I hold the view that it is high time Airlines (I mean, all of them) were held responsible for cases of delayed flight or cancellation except in unavoidable cases such as bad weather or other safety reasons.

The problem in this case is, what the Emir reportedly asked Air-Peace to do as a remedy for delaying their Banjul-Lagos flight was to delay a Lagos-Kano first flight (which was already about taking off) for almost an hour to enable them join.

If Air-Peace had given in to that demand, it would have been akin to punishing innocent Kano-bound passengers just to assuage the good Emir and his entourage. I’m constrained to agree with Air-Peace that doing that would have exposed the revered traditional ruler to ridicule because the passengers would have surely revolted on seeing that a mere mortal was the reason they were kept waiting for an extra hour with its attendant losses in terms of missed appointments, meetings etc.

Solution to delayed flight cannot be to delay another flight. How can you keep people going about their businesses in an early morning first flight for a whole one hour just because you are waiting for one human being?

The claim that Air-Peace disrespected the Emir and by extension, the people of Kano is devoid of merit, in my opinion. That’s unnecessary incitement and dog-whistling. And to think this claim was made even after the Airline had offered to put them in the 7am Lagos-Abuja flight from where they would be taken to Kano AT NO EXTRA COST makes it even more disappointingly appalling.

Had the Emir’s complaint focused only on calling on the NCAA to make Air-Peace account for delaying their Banjul-Lagos flight for over one hour, it would have served the public more.