Kudirat Scott-Igbene, the marketing and communications manager of British Airline, Virgin Atlantic Airways has issued a statement on the reason the company has decided to discontinue operations in Nigeria. A top source of the company had hinted reporters several hours back that they pulled out of the Nigerian market because it is no longer sustainable for the airline to continue to operate in the country.
“Virgin Atlantic Airways has laid off all its Nigerian cabin crew. They were only given three- week notice and no severance package regardless of their length of service will be paid. “The air-hostesses they sacked were about 20 and last year, they closed down their Nigerian call centre and let go of all the Nigerian staff.” The source hinted.
Kudirat explained further that “We have decided that we will no longer have crew based in Lagos. This is by no means a reflection on our Lagos based cabin crew, the primary purpose of our locally based cabin crew has been to provide cultural expertise and customer feedback has shown us that this is no longer a requirement on the Lagos route.
“The additional complexity required to operate an international crew base where there are no foreign language requirement means it is no longer sustainable going forward.”
“This announcement has no impact on our flying programme and we plan to continue flights between Lagos and London.
“After 14 years of flying the route, we remain committed to servicing the Nigerian people, whether it be for business, family or education.”
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U see why Nigeria is a poor country with rich resources. This Airline is comfortable to say that it can land in Nigerian soil, pick up passengers charged at the most outrageous price without any Nigerian crew to soft-land these passengers. This Airline that makes a lot of money from Nigeria, I doubt whether it will have any sort of investment as a give-back to the society that patronizes it. Would they even a CSR if they can sack workers without any benefits nor batting an eyelid…Can this be done in UK by any body? If not that some Nigerian Official would have walloped some bribe somewhere somehow, how can this trash be heard of in a respectful country? Don't worry, Buhari is coming…MTN will shape up now… so will U