As International flights resume on Saturday September 5, the federal government has released a list of international flights that are given licence to resume.
They include British Airways, Middle-East,Delta Airlines,Qatar Airways, Ethiopian Airlines, Egyptair,AirPeace, Virgin Atlantic,Asky,Africa World Airways (,AWA) Air Cote-d’voire , Kenya Airways, Emirate and Turkish airlines.
The approved airlines are expected to operate within Covid-19 protocols.
However,some airlines were denied approval for various reasons
While the federal government disallowed entry to Air France KLM, Lufthansa,Rwandair, Etihad,TAAG Angolan Airlines,Air Namibia and Royal AirMaroc for issues bordering on restrictions ,
,Cape Verde and South African Airlines were denied approval because International flights were yet to resume in their countries.
The Minister of Aviation,Hadi Sariki,who made this known on Thursday at the briefing by the members of the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19, said the criteria used in approving and denying the airlines Operations was based on foreign carrier operator permit,,” which is the requirement by our laws, guidelines by Covid-19 Presidential Task Force and other guidelines including restrictions that came from other countries which will affect our own operations here at home.”
According to him,Air France and Lufthansa were not approved because the Swiss visas owners are not allowed entry which is the same reason for KLM.
Sirika said that considering low fatalities recorded in a country as highly populated as Nigeria, there was no reason to disallow Nigerians to travel and the countries allowed to resume flight Operations would be given a dose of their own medicine.
” We are over 200 million people and we are still talking about 1000 deaths, I think we have done very well to fight this disease,so I think we don’t have any reason whatsoever to disallow Nigerians to travel.”
” What we have done iis to review the issues from other countries and what they have done to us.In the case of Britain,they said, when we come,they will quarantine us and so, when they come to us too,we will quarantine them”. adding that all passengers must submit to guidelines which include submission of valid Covid-19 test which must prove negative as anyone who failed to present or refused to go for a repeat test may be placed on a travel watch list for siv months.
